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[ank]

I guess the only way to prove it is to get a Eve intercept with less than 1000 delta-v.

[andrea]

Congratulations, sneakey pete!
How much fuel left does your lander have? if you did an unpowered landing ( which should be possible, with laythe's thick atmosphere), you should be fine, assuming you didn't burn much when deorbiting. My duna lander is similar and it can launch from kerbin, even if it needs to decouple the radial tanks(plus engines) to do that.

now I want to try going to laythe... sad thing is that I'll have to relaunch my lander, because I forgot to have a ladder on it. which means that kerbals couldn't walk on the surface

[Peewee]

I didn't actually get an intercept, because I didn't bother waiting for the planets to align. A planned orbit which crosses Eve's should be sufficient.

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

Please, do show us some of these.

Also, Kerbin rotates at 174 m/s at the surface, so I don't know where you got the 43 m/s from either.

Edit: 2 images of craft with Eve-crossing orbits planned, one orbiting retrograde, the other prograde, difference in dV required for escape burn = 2.7 m/s (0.2% difference, acceptably within margin of error for the slightly different orbits)
Oh, they're also both at 80km (+/- 3km) orbits over Kerbin.

TLDR: Always launch prograde for interplanetary travel.

[sneakey pete]

Congratulations, sneakey pete!
How much fuel left does your lander have? if you did an unpowered landing ( which should be possible, with laythe's thick atmosphere), you should be fine, assuming you didn't burn much when deorbiting. My duna lander is similar and it can launch from kerbin, even if it needs to decouple the radial tanks(plus engines) to do that.

I used just a tiny bit to deorbit, and to burn on touchdown. 95% or more of the fuel should still be there.

I just tested the lander design, from Kerbin it can just, just get into a 70*70km orbit, using a bit of RCS to get the final amount. Considering Laythe is 80% of the size of Kerbin, I'm thinking with careful piloting that minimizes the need for any corrections, I should be able to make it back to my mothership.

[ank]

Well, I used math!

The radius of Kerbal is 600km. the circumference is 600km*2*pi= 3769910 meters. then divide that with seconds in a day: 24*60*60=86400s
3769910m/86400s=43.6m/s

I have no idea why you are reading 176m/s.
Also, what did you do to get that reading? when I sit on the launch pad it tells me I'm not moving.

[Peewee]

Ah, that's your problem then. The Kerbal day is only 6 hours long. 3769910m / (1d*6h/d*60m/h*60s/m) = 174.5 m/s (the .2 m/s difference is accounted for by the jittering physics on the launch pad)

Click the readout to change modes between 'orbit' (speed relative to the center of mass for the current SoI), 'surface' (speed relative to the surface directly under you in the current SoI), and if you have a target selected, 'target' (speed relative to the selected targeted body).

[ank]

well, in that case the boost you get from an east orbit is quite substantial.

[LoSboccacc]

it isn't just a matter of prograde and retrograde.

it is also from where in the orbit point you do your burn.

assuming no moons get in the way, there is a big difference in where you start your maneuver.

immagine the kerbol system; top down. I'll steal this from a few post ago:
http://i.imgur.com/6R2iQ.png

if you start your burn prograde, when you are moving in the planet orbit on its sun nearest point, you get shoot backward and gain your orbit dV in the transfer maneuver, aiding to lowering your sun orbit.

if you start your burn, still prograde, but on the farthest point of your orbit from the sun, you will be shot 'forward' by your burn adding your velocity to the planet orbital velocity and you'll gain speed instead of loosing it.

[Peewee]

Huh, I wasn't expecting my planetary slingshot guide to show up again!

It turns out that you don't usually want to be at either the nearest or furthest points from Kerbol when you do your burn, due to Kerbin pulling you into a different angle by the time you escape its gravity. (illustration) http://ksp.olex.biz/ shows a closer approximation for any given planet (Ignore the part of the guide that says to use a retrograde orbit to get to lower orbits, since I've just shown it to be wrong. -_-).

[Sean Mirrsen]

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.

I'm rather late to this, but I recommend Dropbox. Easiest way to share images and backup KSP saves ever.

[Mephansteras]

Finally!! Finally managed to dock with that freaking space station and add a module.

I can reliably get near it, but I'm apparently horrible at actually controlling things up close. But I'm sort of getting the hang of it.

Enough to get this nice little power module attached, anyway.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Adding in the side struts with an RCS thruster on the end helped a good bit, I think. Made it easier to control, at least.

[Fikes]

I had a plan to assemble all my boster stages into a big space station, but when I switch to them I can't control the engines. I can rotate them and RCS them, but the engine will not throttle up.

Is it because they are connected to a spent decoupler?

[sneakey pete]

Right click on the engine, activate it. You can activate/deactivate pretty much anything now

[Fikes]

Right click on the engine, activate it. You can activate/deactivate pretty much anything now

Believe me, I tried all that stuff. The throttle doesn't even go up or down.

[Rose]

Do you have any kerbals in the the station anywhere? Or at least a command module with AI? You need those if you want to control anything.