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[ank]

Is there any benefit to putting parachutes on staging parts to save your empty fuel tanks yet?

Cool points 

[Skyrunner]

My second space station piece is a lesson in fail. ;_;
It was unable to maneuver in its third stage thanks to badly placed thrusters, and the final stage's ion engine is helplessly weak. Currently, the piece is spinning slowly in space with all seven giant panels open, waiting for its inevitable descent into sea. Seven panels, because one of them was knocked off by the detaching third stage of maneuvering fail. Siiiiigh Dx



As I write, it is falling into the sea.

[alexandertnt]

God damn this is a good update.

The RTG's produce a depressing ammount of power. It is also a shame you can't fast foward while using the Ion drives (slllooowww). Does ASAS (on its own) produce less rotational thrust now? (it seems to produce virtually none).

My first satellite, and I rotated the main section to fit in eveything better. This was a mistake, the result was a rocket where the mirror tool did not work properly, and being almost impossible to navigate with. My brain hurts and SAS hates me.

[ank]

ASAS has never produced any rotation, it merely controls all the gimbals and wings and SAS.

[Vattic]

Haven't played since the early demo but decided to give this another go. The update reminded me it existed and convinced me to make a purchase.

So far I've put a simple satellite into orbit and my first kerbal has orbited the moon and returned safely. The idea of landing terrifies me.

I'd really like some kind of robotic arm which can grab other craft. I know you can remove debris from orbit by selecting them on the map screen and ending the flight but I'd like to do it manually. It would be good training for docking.

[Peewee]

You can dock with debris and push it down that way.

[ank]

Or if the debris does not have a docking clamp you can make a basket out of landing legs and just push it into deorbit

[andrea]

once again I try. both the earlier station modules are close.
I am modifying the orbit of the module designed to link them so that I get close with that too. when I arrive there, I discover that command pod of power module got separated from the rest of the craft!
I managed to save crew thanks to EVA, but that was the only module that could move well enough to dock with the other 2.

I think I'll never dock!
maybe I should just send a rescue craft to bring all the crew back home ( 4 kerbonauts) and start again.

[sluissa]

Just as a warning, if you intend to dock with debris and then undock again, there's a bug. You'll need to have an extra "pod" module on there somewhere to get around it. It's currently a bug, noted as fixed for 18.1, but if a ship tries to undock without a "root" (i.e. A pod or probe body) then it freaks out and the undocking doesn't actually finish. Weird stuff happens on screen and then when you switch back to the ship again from the space center, it's still docked.

Harvester got around in 18.1 it by just telling it to assign the undocked port as the "root" if it can't find anything else, but for now, you'll just need to work around it.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Actually, no. The bug is only manifested if a composite vessel is docked to something, then the root of the vessel is undocked, and then the rest of the vessel is undocked. I.e. you have a station module with a tug that arrived together as the topmost part of your carrier rocket. If you dock the module to the station together with the tug, and then undock the tug, the module will lose track of itself because it kept the root reference to the tug.

If you encounter this problem by accident, you can work around it until 18.1 is out. Backup your persistence file, and look for the name of the ship that the misbehaving piece was a part of. It should be in a DOCKED_VESSEL section, and a little below it should be a "root_uid" line with a number. Replace that number with the UId of the docking port part (just scroll up slowly till you see the "Uid = <number>" line), and save - the part should now undock safely.

That's how I fixed the service module of my new station. ^_^

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Vattic]

My current mission is to land a probe on Eve to see how hospitable it is. I'm leaving the docking stuff until I get a better grasp of other things.

Is it normal behaviour that a Mainsail connected to a Jumbo 64x tank overheats rapidly while the same engine connected to two X200 32x tanks barely overheats at all? I figured the 64x was just two 32x as one part.

You can dock with debris and push it down that way.

No clamp on what I left in orbit after my moon mission. I guess I could put clamps on everything I expect to leave out there.

Or if the debris does not have a docking clamp you can make a basket out of landing legs and just push it into deorbit

Not a bad idea at all. Now all I have to do is figure out how to intercept parts.

[Putnam]

My current mission is to land a probe on Eve to see how hospitable it is. I'm leaving the docking stuff until I get a better grasp of other things.

Is it normal behaviour that a Mainsail connected to a Jumbo 64x tank overheats rapidly while the same engine connected to two X200 32x tanks barely overheats at all? I figured the 64x was just two 32x as one part.

Probably not normal, but definitely there.

[peskyninja]

My first mission was Apollo styled:
-snip-

Dude that's an huge and inneficient rocket. I've managed to land a larger module with a smaller rocket than that one.

[LoSboccacc]

sooooooo close....

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

turns out you have to open the clamp before getting near; the bay doors hit the station, causing the central section to break apart:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

on another topic, the node interface for maneuvers is epic, and getting to intercept distance was extremely easy.

[Guardian G.I.]

Does anyone have any tips on rocket design?
All of my rockets are too wibbly-wobbly and as a result I can't put anything into a precise equatorial orbit.