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After many weeks of careful research, Kerbal scienists have managed to figure out how to use Mechjeb; and have got a crappy lil ship to minmus:



I am so shit at this game

We were all shit once.

Unfortunately, Asparagus staging causes my computer to go "lolnope" (which is odd- it's fairly new and has good RAM) so I just HyperEdit crap into Kerbin orbit and go from there.

If I make an amazing ship, but when I go to launch it from the runway or pad, deadly reentry kills it, I'll hyperedit it to just out of Kerbin's atmosphere.

I refuse to use Hyperedit because I think it's too cheaty, yet I am still willing to use Unbreakable Joints with my unstable launch vehicles.

Hypocrisy, anyone?

Aside from that, I got my first full space station into orbit. It was actually kind of easy, I guess once you've done one rendezvous you've pretty much done them all. It took 4 launches to get all the current components in, and it has a shit-ton of room for expansion. I present to you:
I plan on sending up some extra stuff, including some fuel tanks (for orbital re-fueling of SSTOs) and an escape vehicle for the on-board crew. The station is currently stocked with a three-year supply of oxygen and orange soda. Like it?

Practicing rendez-vous and docking makes it a lot easier the more you do it. I've had several almost flawless dockings lately.
Hell, my 70 to 80km orbit range around Kerbin is filled with things I need to dock together to build ships in orbit. I should get to that, it's getting crowded.

On the topic of assembling things in orbit. This ship is nearing completion and then I can finally see if I can fly it to distant planets and back. I'll attach another SSTO to it, as well as a lander-type craft and the Xenon supply, and it'll be good to go. Not very hard, it just takes time. The SSTOs are a little tricky to dock because their docking ports are beneath them so it's not as easy as simply moving forwards to get the two docking ports to touch.

That's really fuckin' awesome. And as for the difficulty of docking spaceplanes, just right click the SSTO's docking port and click 'Control From Here'. Then just do the same with the cockpit when you're done.

Tau wrote:That's really I bite my thumb at' awesome. And as for the difficulty of docking spaceplanes, just right click the SSTO's docking port and click 'Control From Here'. Then just do the same with the cockpit when you're done.

I did, it didn't help. Well, it helped a bit, but it was more complicated than a regular docking. Probably because the docking port isn't located at the center of mass.

You'll want a lot more power. You aren't giving it all she's got, Captain.

Pretty sure I can have the ion engines at full power without problem as it is now as long as I'm in the sun, and I haven't added the Xenon unit yet, which has a whole bunch more thermal generators and solar panels.

If even that's not enough then I really will make a small attachement that'll be just tons of thermal generators and hook it up to docking ports. I've got 9 regular docking ports and only plan to use 3 of them, as well as the ability to shift the ship segments around to add new components with the jumbo docking ports.

I'd go for the thermals. Can't have too much power...

I've already slapped as many thermals on it as I could fit.
It takes six thermals to power one ion, I've got 48 ions on that one... so I'd need 288 thermals to keep it powered. Hmmm... that's probably a lot more than what I've got on it.

Then a shit-brick of batteries.

Or just... 48 gigantors... I guess.

Keon wrote:Or just... 48 gigantors... I guess.

Problems with that are:
1- Can't have all 48 of them facing the Sun at the same time.
2- ACH0 says further than Duna, solar panel output drops significantly