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[Aseaheru]

Then why didn't the stages separate? It's not that the engines weren't firing--the exhaust bouncing off the original stage was enough to obscure the whole ship!

Probally staging issues.

[MaximumZero]

Good: Made it to the Mun! Bad: Hit the surface at 1900km/h. Result: Try again.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Relaunching a Mun Launcher Ic confirmed the problem. It also revealed that the thing had two engines run out of fuel somewhat slower than the others. This being said, I nearly reached orbit, impeded largely by my accidentally releasing the command pod instead of killing the burn at 70 kilometers. I very nearly got into orbit despite this, however.

I'm reworking the Muncraft from scratch. While I'm doing so, I discover that the Symmetry button has many settings. In any case, the Mun Tower is three massive sections; let's see how it does.
It explodes on contact with reality. RIP, Geoffrey Kerman. Let's add some rocket-holder thingies.
The rocket manages to not explode upon implementation of physics! It now explodes when links between engines and fuel tanks in the second stage break, everything bangs into everything, and explosions! No deaths. Gerbles is so happy. Upon further examination, it sucked, so let's try this again...

The Mun Tower Mk II in an impressive spire, three stages of grace, power, and not being able to serve as a real tower. It gets some LSEs and launches...promptly getting a slight spin and shaking its first stage apart. Time to add some struts. This model, the Mk III, has a disturbing tendency to lean, all the more disturbing because I forgot to add control surfaces or anything. This test did, however, reveal that the second stage shares with the first a tendency to shake itself apart. The Mk IV should fix both of these issues.

The Mun Tower Mk IV has three new struts and 21 winglets! (I may have went overboard...) However, the SAS does not seem to be using them, and attempts at manual control merely worsen the issue, which is followed by a panicked stage-cycling to try and eject, ending with a swarm of chunks of rocket and Gerbles Kerman's death by fuel tank collision/explosion. An Advanced SAS Module is added, and Joemy Kerman is glad to take the wheel of this new ship! The launch begins well, with the SAS making the takeoff as straight as an arrow. After the ejection of the first stage, however, vibrations begin shaking the ship. And then the game crashed.
...Which I will take as a sign to take a break from KSP.


Fan Mail

Thanks for the stories GW. It brings back my many attempts that ended with destruction. !Fun Times! 

You are welcome!

Then why didn't the stages separate? It's not that the engines weren't firing--the exhaust bouncing off the original stage was enough to obscure the whole ship!

Probally staging issues.

Hm. I'm not sure how, but maybe?

Good: Made it to the Mun! Bad: Hit the surface at 1900km/h. Result: Try again.

Lucky. I can't even get my Mun-rockets into orbit.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The MT-IVc has eleven new struts on the final stage, which should help counteract the shaking. It more or less works as intended, although shifting to the angled ascent is difficult as the handling is absolutely horrible. And the game crashed again. What the--

Huh. It saved right before the launch. Anyways, the re-launch is much the same, with catastrophic loss of control leading to us rocketing down for a bit. We go from a bit over 10 km to a bit over 5 km before we start ascending again. And the game crashed again. Maybe I should stop alt-tabbing while escaped.

The next test works. We manage to nudge it into an angle with little difficulty. We get a 70-km apoapsis as soon as the penultimate stage drops. More problems come up. The level-flight is screwed up, we don't really get the burn started until after apoapsis. We fall for a bit before getting under control, and a new apoapsis. We end up with a highly elliptical orbit, apoapsis just over 6,600 km and periapsis just under 22.4 km. We orbit out a few (in-game) hours.
And then I discover that I cannot re-activate the burn to circularize the orbit. I try to disengage the stage to activate the last form of thrust I might have, and discover that I can't do that either. And yes, this was zoomed-in, not the orbital map. I abandoned the potentially excellent orbit to return homeward.

Then I decide to try turning off SAS and discover that that's the problem. Such a shame. (By which I mean: GODDAMMIT WHY DIDN'T I THINK OF THAT EARLIER?!?)

The orbit decays. I land. Seven hours, nineteen minutes. Good flight, Herming. Good flight.

[Putnam]

SAS shouldn't cause any problems with burning...

Though maneuvering yes you had to turn it off in 0.18

[GreatWyrmGold]

Weirdly, it wasn't letting me burn. Or there was something else stopping me from burning at the apoapsis and not at the periapsis.

[MaximumZero]

Shot for the Mun. Decided I didn't have enough oomph to get there. So, I pointed my Mun Flyer sunward, and fired up the engines, to see how high I could take her. Was goofing off, clicking on stuff, when I decided to set Minmus as a target, and saw that I had a rendezvous set up. Huh, I thought. I might actually have enough fuel to make it there. So, I line up a 50km orbit (I've just recently discovered maneuver nodes,) and sit back and relax. I put her into a parking orbit, swung around Minmus once, and decided to try to set down. From there, I set a path that would land me on a flat looking highland, and pointed retro. Checked the map again to make sure all was well, and then tried to burn. Nothing. I still had plenty of fuel, enough that I should have made it back to Kerbin, in fact. Controls were completely locked out.

I crashed into Minmus because either a) the batteries died (which they had,) or b) I didn't set time warp all the way back to 1x. Not sure which. I was So. Very. Close. ;_; I could almost taste the science.

[azurelao]

What's a good setup for getting a large orange fuel tank up in orbit with enough fuel left for rendezvous with the core of a station?

Somehow got /this/ up there: http://filesmelt.com/dl/spessstation.png

But when I tried it with an OFT I ran out of gas.

[alway]

Playing with my Interstellar Quest mods still. I'm now quite far along in the tech tree; unlocked a lot of the structural parts and all the 3.5 meter stuff.
I then made an awesome resupply craft which is closer to a yacht in appearance.

Spoiler: The Lacunarity Resupply Vessel Prototype (click to show/hide)

http://imgur.com/a/N9fMu
As you can see, it's entirely over the top. It can hold 7 crew, around 8 years of life support supplies, a bunch of uranium and thorium, 2000 monoprop, and it usually makes it up to my 300km station with around an orange tank worth of fuel left. The only problem so far is its propensity to flip around during reentry due to FAR, which makes things rather dicey, since I'm also using Deadly Reentry; but that's just a matter of fleshing out the rear a bit more. It's got the outdoor party-deck up top, for all your space-partying needs. It docks backwards using a 2.5m port, and is about as large as the entirety of my current space station. And due to the massive number of RCS thrusters on the corners, it steers amazingly well in space.

[ank]

What's a good setup for getting a large orange fuel tank up in orbit with enough fuel left for rendezvous with the core of a station?

Somehow got /this/ up there: http://filesmelt.com/dl/spessstation.png

But when I tried it with an OFT I ran out of gas.

Asparagus!
Last time I did a refuelling mission I was disappointed that I only got 7 orange tanks into space...

[Facekillz058]

I have made a lot of progress since I last played this..
I managed to get a probe into Duna orbit! Which was the first interplanetary thing I've ever managed.
Now I'm trying to get a much heavier manned rover there and I'm having difficulties.
THESE KINKS WILL BE WORKED OUT.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Checked the map again to make sure all was well, and then tried to burn. Nothing. I still had plenty of fuel, enough that I should have made it back to Kerbin, in fact. Controls were completely locked out.

Huh. Was SAS on?

[miauw62]

Checked the map again to make sure all was well, and then tried to burn. Nothing. I still had plenty of fuel, enough that I should have made it back to Kerbin, in fact. Controls were completely locked out.

Huh. Was SAS on?

SAS behaves differently in the full game, it was changed in .20 IIRC.

Either way, MZ either had no power to control the ship, or he was in timewarp.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The OrbiTower Mk I, a new paradigm in rocket design, is having a certain amount of trouble with the whole "not falling apart and exploding on contact with physics" thing. It takes a couple tries, but we get Launch Stability Enhancers in positions where they won't allow the Tower to collapse under its own weight. Then the solid fuel boosters break the decouplers and smash into the rest of the ship. A few struts fix that. Unfortunately, the design evidently is too heavy for the relatively few liquid-fuel rockets in the second and third stages to handle, so it is overall considered a failure, even though the solid fuel boosters (narrowly) avoided overheating. The OrbiTower project is scrapped.

I work on an orbital (?) launcher with three stages of solid fuel and one of liquid. Two problems come up: A lack of structural soundness in the bottom stage (note to self: Inter-connect solid fuel stacks) and overheating. Oh, and it has zero control surfaces, only RCS. And in case that isn't enough, it has a terminal case of spinning. And we run out of fuel pretty fast. It's not exactly an ideal proof-of-concept.
You know what they say: If at first you don't succeed, and your original design had horrible flaws, go back to the drawing board because you have unlimited funds anyways. Aand this one fails worse: The first two stages (composed ~100% of solid fuel) fall apart, the third stage starts blasting downward (nearly keeping the cockpit trapped underneath), and the control surfaces didn't do much of anything.
Struts were added...let's see...three here, three there, fifteen overall I think. It worked well for a while...but apparently the decouplers were getting a lot of damage from the exhaust, so the first stage smashed into the rest of the craft. Bill Kerman was killed, his command pod struck by one of the fuel boosters.
Half a dozen new struts were added, connecting the first two stages in a move that I hope I don't regret when the first stage runs our of fuel. I don't! Instead I regret not doing the same with the second stage. Bob Kerman died in the explosion.
Three more struts. And now it explodes right after takeoff. RIP Ludeny Kerman. Too much stress on the one liquid fuel engine, it seems.
Those three struts were supplemented with six new ones. Things go well. Well, until we hit an apoapsis at 13,000 meters and things start going crazy. "SAS isn't keeping us stable and manual control is worse" crazy. Splashdown is achieved.

Time to try something I know can work: The old NL-Vb. Catastrophic failure on the second stage when the solid fuel boosters kinda fall apart, sending us into a wild spin that the SAS makes worse. I, uh...I don't remember that happening. But hey, not counting dignity there were no casualties!
Relaunching, no such difficulties. Geofemy is put into an elliptical orbit, apoapsis a bit over 400 kilometers and periapsis a bit under 100. He even still has fuel!

I'll call that a success and take a break.

[miauw62]

So, GWG, did you buy the full version already?

If you get to the point where you can't properly launch your rockets becaues they're exploding, it's time to stop trying. Massively overengineered things are a MASSIVE PITA to get into orbit, you're better off launching them in seperate parts and then docking them in orbit.

Making rockets that can take a payload to orbit ithout massively overengineering things is also more satisfying.