Nice! Minmus offers its own challenges. Someday I want to set up a mining complex there. I now should have enough science to buy the technology.

Mun is just as easy as Minmus. It's probably just a little practice and experience.

BTW here's my first Mun rover, again see if you can spot the design flaw (lol):



The rocket was designed to land vertically and then I stage the two rovers with a decoupler on each side. Except... I accidentally clipped the decouplers into the two rover bodies so they couldn't separate. Made for a very top-heavy design.

First attempt at Ike. I was looking for something to try rendezvous-ing with outside Kerbin, so I tried to target an asteroid after using the Mun to slingshot me out and then realized it's hard. So I went for Duna instead, but had already wasted a bunch of fuel chasing asteroids...



Revert button incoming.

In place of Ike, I sent trusty Jebediah towards Eve as I experimented with using the Mun to slingshot me in various directions out of Kerbin orbit. My target was initially Gilly, but after getting into orbit around Eve my terrible inclination (88 degrees, lol) gave me no chance of intercept without burning everything I had, so I set my sights back home. It took all but a sliver of my remaining fuel to get back on intercept course with Kerbin, and only barely could I even re-establish an orbit and keep from escaping back into the solar system, with a dismal periapsis of 1.5 million meters. With the precious little fuel I have left, how am I supposed to...wait, WHAT?



Playing with my maneuver node it came across a total chance (I mean with that inclination, wtf, amirite?) encounter with the Mun that put my orbit to within spitting distance of Kerbin's atmosphere. A little more adjustment and we were golden:



I feared for trusty Jebediah's life, but he put his foot down and said "NOT TODAY."



I'd always hoped to use my one time on the lottery or something, but I guess fate had other plans for me.

The rest of this story is pretty epic, but you can also just lower your periapsis by 10k meters and you will eventually get aerocaptured by Kerbin's atmosphere. I once had a mission where I ran out of fuel returning from the Mun or something and had to have my Kerbals get out and jet pack push the spacecraft until the periapsis was <70k, then wait a zillion orbits to get aerocaptured.

Re: the suborbital part test without parachutes, another thing to know before you learn it the hard way is that a straight up-and-down trajectory is generally not survivable, even with parachutes, above a certain height. There is not enough atmosphere to slow the ship down to safe parachute speed before you hit the ground.

Took me like 3 days and a looot of youtube vids to master getting into orbit and back. Maneuver nodes sure make life a hell of a lot easier.

Idk how the **** I’m going to make it to the Mun. My contracts all suck even though I have plenty of science. I’m low on cash and need to make a few facility upgrades before I go for it.

A big problem I’m having is designing stable rockets. Anything other than a straight up and down penis looking thing fails miserably. I dont know what I’m doing wrong there.

Are you guys using MechJeb, or are you hardcore purists?

Post a picture of a rocket that doesn't fly. Generally speaking, rockets flip over when the center of mass gets too far forward. (CoM generally migrates forward over time because the main fuel tank goes from being the heaviest part of the rocket to being an empty shell as fuel burns.) You can delay problems by putting fins on the bottom of the rocket to stabilize, but basically you need to get into thin air before your rocket becomes really top-heavy.

That said, all of your rockets need to be generally phallic (and have nose cones/fairings to cover up anything blatantly un-aerodynamic) in order to work. If you have a bunch of wide crap on top and a narrow base, it's not going to be stable.

I think top heaviness is the issue - usually happens when I try to put like 4 science Jr.’s on top. They’re .2 tons each so that’s a lot of weight up high. Nose cones are a good idea, didnt think of that.

I finally figured out how to use a heat shield on reentry and collect all my data in space so I can just jettison the used experiments that blow up on reentry anyway. I was having major problems on even the shallowest reentries with burning up around 30km.

This game is really fun but I am really bad, so much so that I doubt i’ll be able to do the crazy **** people do like making lunar settlements or building stations piece by piece in orbit.

I know - once I saw the 78k periapsis I knew it would just take a tiny push to get me well into Kerbin's atmosphere and that I was home free. Before the Mun encounter took it that close, it was 1.5Mm so tbings seemed dismal. Pushing a ship with your jetpack sounds epic, lol

Heh, I feel the same about that aspect.

I've never used it but the temptation is there...

But then again, some of my favorite missions are the rescue ones. I think Mechjeb would ruin the fun of those.

I guess don't get discouraged. Even the simple stuff like figuring out how to get something into orbit is a real challenge. A successful Mun landing will give you a real feeling of accomplishment like almost no other game.


I think it takes a lot of the drudgery out of some of the routine stuff, and the pork chop plots are extremely handy.

I think the mechanics of how maneuvers worked really changed my feel for the game, it makes things so much easier. I've looped around Mun and my rockets are powerful enough that it should be a piece of cake at least getting on top of it - just need to figure out a way to pack all the science stuff I want on to the rig.

Figuring out how science works is super useful/important. Knowing that a scientist can unload science from a device and store it in the capsule isn't very obvious. It's important to learn the standard techniques of both transmitting and storing every piece of science.

A great way to practice how science works (and get a nice science boost) is to build a car with all the science instruments on it. Then drive it around the KSP complex. Each building is a separate researchable biome. You should be able to grab a good deal of science quickly.

Early on is there a downside to just putting a piloting module (forget what it's called) on top of your crew module, and loading your crew with 1 scientist instead of a pilot? That way you can just reset all your experiments in a new area instead of packing 4 science Jr.'s, save weight and make the design a lot easier.

it's more micromanagement, but seems more efficient to me

I've never ever used more than one science jr. I've used a capsule and crew cabin on some missions and maybe two one-man capsules stacked on each other. However the three man capsule isn't that far deep in the research tree...

I know that feel! My space probes never land on their feet properly. Still counts, tho.



For first-time Mun missions, I wouldn't worry about packing too much stuff. Get yourself a one-man capsule that's light and can get you there successfully, and then you can worry about adding more stuff and more crew on later missions. You don't have to do all the science on one trip!

Unlocked the first jet engine and once again I'm in "why the **** won't this thing fly" territory, despite very similar CoM/CoL locations as my first plane that does fly well. I want planes to be fun but they really seem like they aren't, just constant runway blowups then twiddling with something to see if it doesn't blow up next time (spoiler: it does).

Move the rear landing gear up closer to the wings. The plane needs to be able to pivet to takeoff.

(just a guess)

Regular planes are pretty dumb and pointless anyways. Spaceplanes are the fun thing, once you have the Mk2 plane parts and the serious engines. (Possibly an air-launched rocket would be fun too.)

I would somewhat discourage doing either of these things, fwiw. If you try to min-max the science system, you can break it pretty quickly and lose the sense of progression through the tech tree. (I mean, go ahead, you can always start another career game if your current one gets stale.)

A ridiculous exploit, if you want it, is to hop around Minmus biomes in a lander with a scientist and a bunch of instruments. You can vacuum up a crazy amount of science in a single trip, since it takes so little dV to move around.

Has anyone built a successful manned Eve mission? I've got a rocket that can take off from Eve (there is a simulator mod that is helpful for testing this stuff), but I have not been able to land it from orbit, and obviously have no idea how to get the lander plus transfer stage into Kerbin orbit.

Took a mission to send Jeb! to the Mun to collect surface temperature samples. Got all the way there and then realized that this would mean landing my rocket at all 4 spots because Jeb!'s EVA reports don't qualify, has to be temperature sensors on the rocket. Oh ****. Then realize I don't have enough fuel to get home. Oh well, go to load my save from before I took off and...

Oops. There isn't one.

I had to mount a RESCUE MISSION



I think this is both my first 2.5m rocket and my first 3-stage rocket. I am now officially a fan of having 3 stages after discovering that landing on the moon is soo much easier with 1 fuel tank rather than 2-3.

Jeb! is now home safe and even managed to grab a bunch of useful science on the Mun while waiting for his ride to arrive. Guy is such a trooper, I hope when my kids grow up someday they're like Jeb!.

What's the next thing I should tackle? The tech tree is opening up to the point where I have about a million options for things to research and it's kinda overwhelming.

This game has always looked pretty cool/interesting to me. Was a big fan of Microsoft Space Simulator back in the '90s. Do I need like a powerful gaming PC for this or can I play it on my 3-year-old laptop?

My old pc ran it fine and that had a i5 2500 and Radeon 6850.

A kid who could be left alone without food, water or oxygen for weeks or months on end when something unexpected happens and be totally fine would indeed be great. Send probes to the Jool system. Or else do a combo manned mission to Ike/Duna. (Or if you want something easier, manned mission to Ike with Duna lander. You can do the same profile in the Eve system.)

I would setup your data network around Kerbin and mun and minmus. This will allow unmanned missions.