Kerbal Space Program

Darg said:
You don't want to cut orbital velocity completely at that stage, you'll still fall very fast to the surface due to gravity. You probably do want to come in a bit steeper than you would for a planet with atmosphere though.

As you're approaching the surface, maybe 10km up, start slowing your velocity by burning retrograde, this will also have the effect of slowing your lateral as well as vertical velocities. By 5km you want to be down to around 200m/s, as you get closer to the surface, around 500m you want to have completely removed any lateral velocity with a relatively slow -30m/s vertical speed. Once you can see you're getting close to the surface try zeroing your velocity then slowly letting the craft drop down at around 4-5m/s and try to keep lateral at 0. It's also handy if you can aim at a flat part of the surface :D
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Okay thanks, makes sense... I guess I may need to do a bit of a redesign of my probe before I attempt it again then as I don't think it would presently have enough fuel + power for all that (at the moment once the probe is detached for landing all it has is the little tiny electric/ion probe engine, which proved totally useless last night)... Would you normally have a final stage with a proper engine still coupled to the lander until the last part of the descent?
 
The tutorials aren't great, but for anyone starting the game up for the first time they are definitely worth going through.

A small tip for the end stage of landing. If you have RCS on your lander then you can use the I, J, K and L keys to use your RCS thrusters to kill any lateral movement. So, once you have killed most of your lateral movement you can use the ASAS to keep the craft pointing straight upwards, use the engine just to stop your descent and the RCS to get rid of all the lateral movement. Obviously this is for when you are right near the surface, you cant realistically kill all your lateral movement with RCS :p

*edit*
While I'm waiting for the mods to update to 0.21, does anyone have a challenge in mind for the new version? I was thinking the highest air speed would be a great challenge now that we have the new ASAS but i'm open to other ideas :)
 
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uncle_rufus said:
Okay thanks, makes sense... I guess I may need to do a bit of a redesign of my probe before I attempt it again then as I don't think it would presently have enough fuel + power for all that (at the moment once the probe is detached for landing all it has is the little tiny electric/ion probe engine, which proved totally useless last night)... Would you normally have a final stage with a proper engine still coupled to the lander until the last part of the descent?
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Yes you definitely need a decent rocket for the lander stage. It's essentially doing the opposite of a takeoff rocket ( for a smaller gravity well in this case ) and so should be as powerful as a rocket that would be used to take off from the surface of the body you're landing on.

For a small probe you should be able to get away with the smallest liquid fuel rocket for landing on the moon though due to the low gravity.
 
wow either I got lucky or plane design is so easy. not one tweak needed to be made, glided at 50m/s with no engines for landing and top speed on 1900m/s at 27k cruising altitude and easy to recover from flame outs which happened twice, I even popped upto 39k at one point in a flat spin. missed pics I was on the phone.

w5m.png

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Now to go add more engines.

mk2 in a flat spin max alt smidge over 54k
qd7u.png

need to add some electrical power
 
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Got fed up of flat spinning, so hard to keep planes at the right altitude.
So installed mechjeb, it needs the sas overhaul, mechjeb still wobbles all over the place.
 
managed to make it around kerbin in a plane, no refuels. although left it to go make some food and over shoot the run way by a long way and ran out of food, this think is a bit squirley at certain points, due to fuel load. but most of the time its so good, and when out of fuel and gliding, its 40m/s and only 2 m/s vertical drop.

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Glaucus said:
Got fed up of flat spinning, so hard to keep planes at the right altitude.
So installed mechjeb, it needs the sas overhaul, mechjeb still wobbles all over the place.
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Your mk2 craft is a serious air hog; Hence why you get such great altitudes.
As for your craft design, you have a ton of weight in the center, hence why it's relatively stable. :)

While I was testing I created the following two craft:

Folcon: 9 Engine, Super-Sonic Craft.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/aaasj7ivnv4tlb8/(SI) FOLCON.craft
5jvb.jpg

ukbx.jpg

8ff2.jpg


Sparrow: 2 Engine VTOL.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ubx6osozpdyjbnd/(SI) SPARROW.craft
78jh.jpg

lppv.jpg

Please download them, an give me some feedback.
PS: Action groups are listed in the craft description, so read it..
 
Mark 6 is the round the kerbin one, 15 air intakes per engine (2 engines) :)
40mins in to another flight, looking good for landing ack in base after a round the kerbin trip. Probably another 10-15mins of flight time.

Wish there was a way to hold planes at a certain altitude.

Your aircraft look nice and neat.

If I land this I need a new challenge.
 
Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing :) Also, for your first plane that is seriously impressive. 1900m/s on jets alone is a very respectable speed, especially for something that size.

I was thinking of saying a 30km altitude limit for the speed tests for the challenge that I suggested since thats what a similar challenge on the KSP forums is using, so if you want to make that an entry to the competition that only I seem to be interested in then I'll put your name on the leaderboard that I haven't made yet.

I also suggested the air speed challenge to a friend of mine on steam, and this is the craft I came up with:
HKjYxcvl.jpg
(click for full res)

Because I'm an utterly useless pilot I had to fire off the booster rockets when I was going at ~1300-1600m/s because otherwise the jet would have cut out. At the end of the boost I was going at 2880m/s but I was also at ~32,000m so I wont put it on the LB. (to be honest, i wouldnt mind if you guys went to that kind of height, but I figured it would be best to be strict to myself)

I tried adding more intakes on the front (I tried 15 on each wing) but i just couldn't get it stable at the higher altitudes so it ended up slower
 
I hate this new end flight business, it just doesn't work, lost so many flights due to reverting. It needs changing.
Same as when on a launch pad and you've fast forwarded to align planets then realise yu forgot something like a parachute, you revert back to befor the fast forward it's frustrating.
 
Yeah not liking the end flight options either. Also noticed a couple of bugs. One of which where it doesn't all me click parts when dragging and dropping. Very annoying.
 
Glaucus said:
I hate this new end flight business, it just doesn't work, lost so many flights due to reverting. It needs changing.
Same as when on a launch pad and you've fast forwarded to align planets then realize you forgot something like a parachute, you revert back to before the fast forward it's frustrating.
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I think it works wonderfully well (Granted took a few days too get my head round it.)
Remember that F5 (Save) + F9 (Reload) still function as intended, so use them for mid-mission save's; With Revert Flight (Runway/VAB) or Space Center button for the beginning.
Happy launchings. :D
 
But I don't wont to revert or save. I want to remove the vehicle from the pad, roll it back into the VAB make a minor adjustment then roll it back out, this doesn't seem possible?

Or once a craft has landed then what, it jsut stays there for ever, even if within the KSP area.

Or this one really annoys me, launch one, then launch another, go back to the first, find it wasn't upto spec and falling to bits in duna atmosphere. You have no choice but to sit there and wait 15mins for it to smash into duna so you can go to the space centre, or revert to launch/VAB, losing the second flight as well.

What I want is an end flight button, ie. I don't care, just cut the comunication satelite and I lose the money.
 
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Just getting back into this and am both loving it and being hugely frustrated with it at the same time.

Still struggling to actually get into orbit...either run out of fuel or end up with a major ellipse that always seems to intersect the planet on the return...will work that out am sure.

Had a mod installed prior to the latest update that gave me a shed load of different components to choose from, but for the life of me cant recall what it was called. Anyone any ideas as to what it might be?
 
Are there any tutorials on how to place landers within the rocket using the stages in the correct way? I tried to make a system to work as an escape for rocket mishaps on and close to the launch pad, but everytime it doesn't work!
 
Agreed on the lack of an end flight option.

Also has anyone noticed anything different with SAS, when I was flying a couple of rockets last night the SAS seemed almost useless, where as before it was working well.
 
Shelster said:
Just getting back into this and am both loving it and being hugely frustrated with it at the same time.

Still struggling to actually get into orbit...either run out of fuel or end up with a major ellipse that always seems to intersect the planet on the return...will work that out am sure.

Had a mod installed prior to the latest update that gave me a shed load of different components to choose from, but for the life of me cant recall what it was called. Anyone any ideas as to what it might be?
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Are you switching too map view and checking what the ap is? Once it's reached 100km set throttle to zero, make a manoeuvre node at the ap and circularise. Then it'll tell you how long to fire for, do so you fire half before and half after the node.
 
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