Yeah, I pretty much re-did one of my suborbital missions to a different biome, but this time with a materials bay to get the solar panels unlocked. I could probably get a lot more by repeating several of these missions to different biomes, but re-doing missions every time I get a new scientific instrument is just a little too grindy for me if I can at all help it.
So I’ve now gotten a couple of unmanned probes into Munar orbit, next I have to figure out how to get something there with enough fuel to left over to actually get back…
Oooh, I like that idea. Too bad you need to be fairly high up in the the tree for it to work well… it would be nice to do that early on.
I’m just finishing up a no-transmission career run. Manned sample returns only. One mission to Vall almost required a rescue mission after realizing that I forgot to install parachutes (doh!). It took a few tries but I was ultimately able to use the Oberth effect to save enough delta-V that I could get back to Kerbin and land with the Vall lander (instead of the orbiting transport craft, which didn’t have enough thrust to land).
I just tried it, and it doesn’t work. The game automatically deletes things on reentry if you’re not actively controlling them. This wouldn’t be a problem if it distinguished between empty booster rockets destined to smash into the ground and parachute-equipped probes, escape modules or Science! containers, but it doesn’t.
How high up are you? I believe the game has a “physics limit” of 2.5 km, where beyond that point the game doesn’t properly model the atmosphere. So, you need to be below this altitude and loiter around long enough for the probe to hit the ground. Once you do, you should be able to leave the area.
There’s nothing truly necessary. The game is pretty balanced as is, and you can go everywhere in the Kerbal system with the stock parts.
That said, I never leave home without MechJeb. Some people call it “easy mode”, but like everything else it depends on how you use it. Fine-tuning maneuver nodes can be a real pain in KSP and MechJeb makes them easy. It also relieves some mundane tasks, like launching to low Kerbin orbit.
The Kerbal Alarm Clock relieves another particularly mundane task, which is coming out of time warp in advance of a maneuver node or other timing-sensitive thing. MechJeb handles part of this but the alarm clock is still very useful.
If you want to hand-fly planetary transfers instead of depending on MechJeb, you’ll still want a way of figuring out phase and ejection angles. The Protractor mod is very useful for this.
Finally, another tool that I use a lot is not a mod at all, but rather this page. Aerobraking is a bit of a black art but that page has a calculator that removes some guesswork. It’s very useful for Jool missions in particular, where you want to aerobrake on Jool but end up on one if its moons.
If you don’t want to use MechJeb, there’s the Kerbal Engineer Redux which calculates deltaV, thrust/weight, and many other things for you without doing any autopiloting.
Ferram Aerospace overhauls aerodynamics which fixes the “it makes no difference whatsoever what shape your rocket is” issue, and makes planes work with a semblance of reality. It also makes it significantly decreases the deltaV required to get into orbit because drag with a proper rocket is rather lower than vanilla, which I don’t care for.
If you dislike being able to aerobrake without any consequences, Deadly Reentry is the answer. There are also other difficulty/realism mods that add things like life support requirements.
Docking Port Alignment by Navyfish gives instrument readouts of your docking alignment, which is a noticeable improvement over cranking the camera around looking for an angle that silhouettes the vessels on the dark side of a planet so you can see what you’re doing.
Something I just found out: By right clicking on the parachute, you can set it to open at a particular altitude, from way high to you-don’t-really-want-to-live-do-you-?
You can also adjust it for a particular pressure but I don’t understand what that refers to.
Aside from emptying propellants you don’t need and setting the parachute, how else can parts be adjusted by right clicking?
You can limit thrust on engines, which means that you can tweak solid rocket boosters to run longer at lower thrust than normal, or that you can balance thrust on an asymmetric design like a shuttle replica. You can have various items like lander legs start deployed rather than stowed. Select which of control/pitch/yaw aerodynamic control elements will be used for. Probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of.
Boy, Kerbals are stupid. My first successful Kerbal manned Mun landing ended in tragedy when Tomren Kerbal anxiously jumped out of the capsule to do an EVA on the Mun, then realized he didn’t have a ladder to get back up to the cockpit.
Ever inventive, he figured his last hope was to push the lander over on its side so he could get back in, then hope he could ski his way off the surface and back into space. After tipping it over he jumped for joy in success - and realized he could have jumped back up to the cockpit in the low Mun gravity. Stupid Kerbal. And of course, the skiing trick didn’t work.
Being kind-hearted, the Kerbals immediately launched a rescue mission - which crashed while trying to land close to Tomren. A second rescue was launched, and managed a successful landing within walking distance. The rescue hit a snag, however, when everyone involved realized that the capsule could only hold one person.
And apparently shameless imitators of a parallel universe where exactly the same thing happened. Though the rescue mission there actually managed to blow up when they crashed into the the stranded lander.
No I can’t explain what they were thinking nor can I explain how they can hit a tiny lander and miss an entire moon. Obviously I’m working with a complete moron.
I have also done the rescue with no spare seats. The rocket had remote control, but I didn’t notice the computer had put a Kerbal in the capsule. I get up to space and, whoops, no room.
Did you remember ladders on the second capsule? Kerbals are a stupid but hardy bunch, and will happily hang onto ladders on the outside of the craft. They are only mildly barbecued on reentry.