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[tryrar]

wow! congrats!

did you do it by hopping trough biomes or using a rover? (or both =P)

I'm trying to find out the right way to use the Science Lab. I built a single rocket that broke down in four parts: One orbiter/return capsule with a Kethane detector (I know, Kethane is cheating), one rover/lifter (no wheels but gets around by flying), a lab/livingspace/fuel base, and a mining/fuel/refinery tower. After having landed all except the orbiter I connected the mining tower to the lab (using KAS), put two kerbals in there, and then had the third one use the rover/lifter loaded with science to hop around to the various biomes (Flats, Lesser Flats, Great Flats, Greater Flats, Lowlands, Midlands, Poles, Slopes, I only missed the highland one), and refuel at the main base after each hop. I only used the Science Lab to reset the goo and materials modules, and returned with about 60 experiments (went up with the rover with 3 kerbals on it, met up with the orbiter, and used that to get home).


Hard parts: the lifter. It's really hard flying around on an unbalanced vehicle. Low thrust and careful use of RCS and reaction wheels for maneuvering, after some practice I got better at it. Using it to lift the heavy Science Lab module (which also had fuel tanks and that big station-module) to the surface and landing it close to the mining tower was even harder. Getting the entire unbalanced contraption into orbit without it falling apart took quite a few tries as well. During the whole mission I felt myself getting better at doing stuff manually, where I used MechJeb before. Rendezvous, docking, landing, maneuvers, I all do them manually now. I do still use the orbital calculator to find planet-to-planet transfer windows, though.


I'm really liking these transformers-type builds with multiple craft in one launch. Yesterday I flew by Duna with a Science Lab orbiter, a lander for Ike, and a small landing probe for Duna. Does anyone know of a mod that has robotic arms or other moving parts? I like trying to build tiny aerodynamic packages for launch and then expand those into big spacethings.

Infernal Robotics is what you want for movable arms and hinges

[Siquo]

Infernal Robotics is what you want for movable arms and hinges

Oh wow, that looks awesome! Thanks!

[Descan]

How is Kethane cheating? o-o

[Aseaheru]

I think it gives too much fuel for there brains to handle.
Else you are required to ship fuel everywhere...


Christ, I wish the game had resources stock allready...

[LoSboccacc]

meanwhile KMP has career mode support

http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/55835-KMP-v0-1-5-0-0-23-wip-alpha

[ank]

anybody running a server?

[Ruskin]

Maybe....one of my friends was planning on hosting a KMP server before the holidays....got a bit busy with xmas and stuff so we decided to wait a bit

I'll ask him if he wants to host it now that everything's back to normal

[Twi]

So KMP is actually working reasonably well now, huh?

[forsaken1111]

If KMP is working well and not crashing every 12.3 minutes I'll look into running a server again.

[IronTomato]

Alrite srsly gize.

What shape does a rover need to be so that it doesn't flip over when I'm turning (or sometimes just going straight) at more than 10 m/s?

[LoSboccacc]

Trapeozoidal, with enough weight at the bottom to ballast

Look into lesser grippy tires as you would want the rover to skid, not to tumble

[sluissa]

Also, I forget if it's still a problem with the most recent version, but the last few versions had the default keys for wheel control and rotation control be the same keys, which ended up with the rover wanting to tilt in the direction you were going/turning. A rover without a lot of weight or a wide wheel base or with too much torque due to reaction wheels could easily flip because of this.

[Rose]

Solution: switch to docking mode when rovering.

[Aseaheru]

Yep. And hope the tires arent on backwards.

[Siquo]

Mission to Duna (bad planning, but we made it)

And my first attempt at "folding engines" using Infernal Robotics: