[NGTM-1R]

Well since you just built the white ninja falconzord and KSP supports docking any chance of a full megazord?

FUND IT. GREEN LIGHT, GREEN LIGHT!

[newman]

So, until 0.18.2 came out I had a probe on everything you can put a probe on in the system. Then they introduced Eeloo, so my Zond program got an extension. I used a very similar setup I used for other long distance probe missions. Eeloo's orbit is inclined a lot more than Jool's is, and it's eccentric. At it's closest point to the Sun, Eeloo's orbit intersects that of Jool's, meaning for a short time in Eeloo's orbit around the Sun it's closer to it than Jool. To conserve fuel, this is the point I aimed to catch it in, and it worked like a charm.




I still needed to kill some 1700 m/s to end up in orbit, so whoever goes there make sure you have enough fuel aboard for that breaking burn, otherwise your landing mission will turn into a fast flyby instead. This thing looks like some kind of an Europa / Enceladus hybrid. I was hoping for some steep cracks in the ice, and canyons made exclusively of ice, but closer inspection reveals it's surface is covered with some kind of a snow-like substance. This reminds me of Enceladus, which has geysers that spew liquid material from it's warmer insides. The water freezes while flying over surface and turns to something resembling snow, which covers a lot of Enceladus's surface. I wonder if that is the case here as well?




Orbiting Eeloo at 50km altitude. This was taken after the probe has already detached and landed.




Landing near one of the larger canyon intersections to get a closer look.




Obligatory sunset over Eeloo. Onboard instruments show no atmosphere (wasn't expecting to find one, either), very low gravity (I think it was some 18% that of Kerbin's), and a surface temperature of -30 degrees. Now, that's cold, but not as cold as I'd expect from a small ice dwarf planet orbiting at that distance from it's host star, which does bring some merit to my Enceladus analogue theory. Only Enceladus has Saturn that helps keep it tectonically active with it's gravitational force; Eeloo is a standalone dwarf planet so it'll be up to Kerbin's science division to figure out what's keeping it's core warm.

[StarSlayer]

A word of warning to anyone who hasn't tried 0.18.2 yet: they completely rebalanced the RCS system making ships burn through monopropellant at a significantly increased rate. You may find your old designs used to dock large parts to orbiting bodies now lack enough RCS fuel to complete their jobs.

A large RCS tank now carries 750 fuel (used to be 200) but it last significantly less than before. To compensate, you may want to bring more RCS fuel aboard and tweak those thrusters so they're aligned with the center of mass and kill any thrusters that aren't necessary.

Even with that I'm afraid small probes got the short end of the stick since they still use the same thrusters as the big stuff, and 8 thrusters will drain a small tank very fast now.

Balls

Guess I won't be using RCS to deorbit in case I fumtu and use up all my main fuel.  Setting up a manuver node, switching to Docking and using RCS for precision orbit adjustment is out as well.

[crizza]

Still I got nothing in a stable orbit^^
And i even don't get what kind of fuel the nuclear engine needs...

[Dragon]

Normal rocket fuel and oxydizer.

[Bob-san]

Just a whole lot less of it (thanks to its 800 isp).

[crizza]

Scratch that, now I have a station in orbit...two big tanks, a probe as command capsule, a doking ring...and for very small engines with four RCS...next step is to get other things to the station, but how to dock them...if I manage to get them to the station, I guess I'll ramkill the whole thing

[TwentyPercentCooler]

Scratch that, now I have a station in orbit...two big tanks, a probe as command capsule, a doking ring...and for very small engines with four RCS...next step is to get other things to the station, but how to dock them...if I manage to get them to the station, I guess I'll ramkill the whole thing

I know someone in this thread has already linked one or more of these, but Scott Manley's tutorial videos are extremely helpful, and also his accent is awesome:
http://www.youtube.com/user/szyzyg

Docking takes some practice - I just figured it out in the past two days or so, after failing miserably for a nice, long while. It's not hard once you figure it out, though. The game is pretty forgiving. "Eh, close enough, go go Gadget magic magnetic clamps!"

[crizza]

Hm...I was drunk when I brought the station into orbit...and hell, the orbit is going over the north and south pole...so, to get other modules there, I have to reproduce my drunken pilot skills...so far, it didn't work^^

[watsisname]

When you are about to launch, go to the map view and time accelerate until the station's orbit goes over the launch site.  When the station itself is about to pass overhead (say 10 to 15 degrees beforehand), launch and then instead of leveling off eastward as normal, point your ship in the direction the station is moving (presumably near due north or south) to get into a similar orbit. 

You may need to fine tune your orbital inclination afterward, as well as the eccentricity to get a good close approach for docking.  The youtube tutorial vids linked above are helpful for getting a handle on how to do that.  Any specific questions/problems just ask!

In other news, I finally sent a probe to the Joolian system.
Aerobraking at Jool

Entering Laythe atmo; deployed chutes.  (I ****ing love drogue chutes!)

Landed, just in time to watch the sun emerge from behind Jool.  What a sight.


Meanwhile, back at Kerbal Space Center...

[newman]

Stations in KSP are mostly useful as fuel depots. As such, they'll be of most use in an equatorial orbit, which is also good for newbies to practice docking - much better than a polar one for that. So in crizza's shoes I'd deorbit it and start again in equatorial, tbh.

[watsisname]

Prograde equatorial orbits also take full advantage of Kerbin's (or any other body's) rotation, so yeah, it's a good habit to launch things east even if you're not planning to do interplanetary stuff yet.

[newman]

Starting to get used to the new RCS system. It's not so bad once you get used to it. I just modified one of my heavy lifters to stop using quad RCS thrusters at all. They were all replaced with the linear ones - I have two pairs of 4 placed near the top/bottom, I also have 4 in the nose oriented towards the front (breaking thrusters) and 4 in the "ass" to provide forward thrusts. The thing works great, doesn't wobble and spray all over the place when ASAS is on, and I just docked a part to my space station using this setup and spent a grand total of 30 monopropellant to do it. Looks like 750 is more than enough if you make the thruster setup efficient - I packed two large tanks and returned to Kerbin with 1470 units of unused monopropellant

[crizza]

The orbit of my station doesn't go about the launch site at all...But since I have fuel left I try to change it.

[newman]

Quick tip: in the map view, set the Mun as your target when doing that. It's pretty much in equatorial orbit over Kerbin and is a good reference point. Set your maneuver node at either the ascending or descending node, see how much delta v it will take to get back to equatorial orbit, and if you estimate there's enough fuel for that, go for it. If you're really in a polar orbit it'll take a long burn, so you may want to break it up into several shorter burns to get the optimal results.

[watsisname]

The orbit of my station doesn't go about the launch site at all...But since I have fuel left I try to change it.

Just time accelerate until it does.   Think of an orbit as a loop that just hangs stationary in space, and the planet rotates underneath of it.

[newman]

Time to show off my orbital shipyard - I just delivered an engine section of the Discovery to it, marking the beginning of it's construction. Now I'll need to dock the command module to it, and also fuel and crew it. The ship is designed to be able to make return trips anywhere in the Kerbol system, delivering docked landers as the missions require. Yay for reusable interplanetary ships, might use this to start a colony somewhere








Discovery engine section on final docking approach to Orbital-1.












Nice to finally have something inside that shipyard, it's been empty / under construction for ages








All that was left was to detach the tug that maneuvered the engine section up to here and return the crew home. I'll be docking a real command module in it's place, with a greater crew capacity and other equipment necessary. Though a part of me will be sorry to undock the ship because it's really cool to just have it docked in the yard

[Scourge of Ages]

Nice looking spacedock you have there, newman.

Say, I've been having a bit of difficulty with something: Is there a way to attach a vehicle to something using two separate decouplers? Say, a large solid booster(s) on the side of the main launch vehicle. Or something like a spaceplane piggybacked to a jet-powered launch vehicle? Or a vehicle attached on top of a large delta wing assembly instead of having the wings actually stuck onto the side of it?

Every time I've tried, even though they were lined up properly, only one decoupler actually stuck, and the vehicle sort of clipped through the other one like there was nothing there.

[Nuke]

yep thats badass, i kinda gave up work on mine because framerate < 1.

[watsisname]

Your station's so big the framerate is measured in SPF.  Awww yeeeah.