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[GodlyTeapot]

Well, you're doing as well as me. I've accomplished unassisted (by mechjeb, that is) mun landings, and one accidental slingshot out of the kerbol system.

I had to start a new save since I had so much junk orbiting the Sun

Gravity is quite a bit less, IIRC, so you won't need as much fuel to slow down/take off again. If you want an easy-ish landing, aim for the blue areas of Minmus; it's basically a frozen ocean, and thus very flat.

Thanks, this is all really good to know, though I do feel it isn't quite in the spirit of the game to KNOW what you're flying yourself into. I'm glad it's flat though, I find landing to be rather tricky, I get the feeling that there is a knack to this game, much like Dwarf Fortress. Ah well, let the !!FUN!! commence!

[Sirus]

Well, in real life we can tell quite a lot about other planets through observation and probes. Just pretend that you scientists gave you the intel

[GodlyTeapot]

"Sir we asked our top scientists to investigate Minmus' surface to find any information that will help with the landing."
"What did they say they found?"
"The surface is purple, and they believe it may have water on it."
"Why do they think that?"
"Some of the surface is blue sir."
"Excellent! I don't know how our boys do it...But they do. FIRE THE ROCKET!"

[bombzero]

This if the fuel hub for my space station, the actual part holds over 10k fuel with matching oxidizer.

For scale, that's the 3 man command module up there on top, without the tower removing mod this couldn't fit on the pad.
The reason for the overkill first stage (all of the outermost fuel tanks are attached to the first stage, not the others) is, well, look at the mass.

Gonna be letting MechJeb take this one into orbit, I lack the reasonable piloting skill to do a gravity burn that won't lead me burning up.

[dragonshardz]

A sane Kerbal Space Commander would have boosted this into orbit in multiple parts, I'd think.

Then again, we're DF players.

[Aqizzar]

After retrieving my space station crew so they wouldn't have to be stuck there for months of time acceleration, I finally launched my real Duna probe mission.

Then I launched it a second time when I realized that it wasn't going to make the trip without a nuclear engine.



That thing is wobbly as all Hell, and doesn't even make it into a holding orbit without the transfer engine, but thanks to the magic of the interplanetary orbit plotter and a lot of guesswork, 120 days after launch I had a probe in gravitational encounter range of Duna.  (About half of that time was spent parked in Kerbin orbit while the planets turned.)

The orbital theoretically-docking probe half used up the last of the main fuel tightening up the orbit and will stay forever in a massively tilted oblong no less than 800 kilometers from Duna, but I'm damn impressed that it made it at all.  I don't think I'll be doing any docking with it.  As for the landing half of the probe...



Success!  As you can see, I tried to aim for a regolith sea as I hear they're good for landing and I misjudged the distance and came tumbling down a hillside instead.  Oh well, it survived with all it's instruments and some of its utility equipment intact, so I'm gonna call it a success.

[GodlyTeapot]

Any have any advice for interplanetary missions? Should I go to eve or Duna?

[sneakey pete]

Eve is easier to land on, harder to take off from, they're both about the sameish level of difficulty to actually get to, from what I understand.

In other news, my 6 kerbal manned Jool mission is successfully orbiting Laythe!
The downside is that I massively underestimated the amount of fuel needed, and by the time I land the lander and SSTO (and hopefully... send them back back upto the mothership), I won't really have the fuel to get back to Kerbin infact i'll have about one standard mid size fuel tank worth left.
One part of the problem is just me not putting enough fuel in the design itself, the other part is that I didn't really fathom how much speed i'm aerobraking off in the Jool system, and therefore how much i'll need to put back on with thrust.

Lots of pretty pictures to come sooner or later

edit: for those wondering, laythe's gravity is 7.85 and pressure is .78.


edit: screenshots.

Spoiler: nice LKO image (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: docking refueling tanks (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: ready to go! (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: encountering Jool (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: aerobraking in Jool (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: in orbit around Laythe (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: another angle (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Jeb setting off in the space plane (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Jool set (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: another angle (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: landed, Jeb is happy (click to show/hide)

In the end, it took me about 5-6 goes to land it. Firstly, I needed to actually have something to land on, so it took me a couple of goes to get my orbit right so that i'd end up on the tiny island that I did manage to land on. After that, I discovered that I couldn't really make an unpowered landing with the fully laden craft, 10m/s of vertical velocity downwards is way to much. After a few goes (reloading from the upper atmosphere) i managed to land it, twice actually, but i un-deployed my landing gear once i'd stopped the first time

As far as the chances of it getting back into orbit and rendezvousing with the mothership? i'd rate it highly, this craft on its own is able to get into Kerbin orbit, and this planet has 80% of the gravity and atmosphere.
Next up is testing the more traditional style lander.

[ank]

Eve is the easiest to get to, it has a large atmosphere and lots of gravity.
It also requires the least Delta-v to reach of all the planets.

Just remember to go into a westwards orbit around Kerth, when you want to go to a planet in a lower orbit around the sun.

EDIT: This coffee is fucking terrible!

[JWNoctis]

Just remember to go into a westwards orbit around Kerth, when you want to go to a planet in a lower orbit around the sun.

Retrograde orbit? Why?

[Peewee]

ank: No, you still launch into a prograde (east) orbit for the extra velocity provided by the planet's spin. You just need to do your escape burn on the lit side of the planet (from where you would burn for a higher orbit).

Example: http://imgur.com/a/wmZ8g

[sneakey pete]

As an aside, is imgur a decent imagehost? Photobucket is giving me the craps lately due to their changed layout, and seemingly shrinking all of my images, even the 150kb ones.

[bombzero]

As an aside, is imgur a decent imagehost? Photobucket is giving me the craps lately due to their changed layout, and seemingly shrinking all of my images, even the 150kb ones.

Imgur is easy, but compresses images. Good for sharing things where the content is more important than the quality. or for quick sharing in general as it also allows direct pasting of print screens.
Img.ie is good for reliable hosting of things where quality is important enough to deal with slightly more work to upload something.

Both are good in my experience with them.

[ank]

First off: it's quite possible to reach Eve both ways.

And it is harder to get a west orbit, but not by much. Kerbin rotates at 43m/s, so by launching east you are saving 86 Delta-v.

But once you are there, the transfer requires less Delta-v. Getting to another planet requires around 2000 delta-v(ballpark) so you just need to save 5% on the transfer to make it worth it.

Now, I can't really explain why, but I think some of the planetary transfer guides explains it.

[sneakey pete]

The transfer doesn't require and less change in velocity once you're in orbit.

also, pinpoint landing a lander on a tiny island is a pain in the arse.

edit: but sucessful.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So that makes the 3 kerbals on 2 different landing methods on 2 different islands on Laythe. Hopefully I can get them back to orbit, and, eventually, kerbin. While the SSTO shouldn't be an issue, Bill and Bob in this lander might pose one, i'm not sure if it has enough fuel to get to orbit. It does help that i'll be starting from 4500m though.
We'll find out next year, as i'm going away for the weekend to celebrate new years