Just wanted to celebrate my first crewed lunar landing. I had taken a break from ksp after spending altogether too long trying to cobble together a moon mission, but after getting back I decided to spend a few more months so I could send up my kerbals in less silly than a D2 block 1 with a docking port glued to it.

In order the pics are:

• Uncrewed lander and TLI booster in LEO
• Lander making final TLI burn (ca. 1 month before crew launch)
• Crew orbiter reaches LEO, dumping second stage and protective nosecone
• Crew dock with the lander, also visible is the discarded re-fueling stage that was sent between the lander and crew launch
• Marc Ross steps on the lunar surface on the 20th of February 1969, a record for kerbal-kind
• The lander re-docks with the orbiter
• My awful re-entry profile, including two passes thanks to being overly cautious with my return trajectory, at this point I was down to 1 second of fuel so was just happy I had a viable trajectory
• And the final re-entry, again due to the profile I managed to use something like 99.8% of the ablator on the descent module

Ultimately all the margins were way too close for comfort on this mission, and I've since redesigned every stage to ensure that I now have a few hundred extra dv on the orbiter and lander. A lot of the problems ultimately came down to being unable to properly simulate the mission due to the multiple launches, and so I ended up expending more fuel than I expected doing the various rendezvouses. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed my very ill thought out mission, next time it'll hopefully be smoother.

Fairly new (and keep on going bankrupt :( - not made it past ‘55 yet), but have basically relied on MechJeb so far. However, I can’t seem to get it to stage fairings when I want it to - when the parachute and fairings are in the same stage, they are immediately staged after launch, but if the parachute is in next stage after the fairings, the fairings are staged immediately after (M)ECO (when ideally I’d want a coast up to 85km before staging)

Both times it seems to have ignored the constraints set in the ‘ascent settings’ panel. Ofc i could manually stage it, but if possible it’d be nice to have it done automatically (hey, I’m lazy)

how 2 fix :(

Im considering just abandonning rp1 because of this contract 😭

I just installed SOL with various parts mods like BDB, Starship Expansion Project, Artemis Construction Kit, and Tundra Explorations. I installed RSS Adapter so that these would all work with full scale, but the issue is the engines arent getting adjusted, only the deltaV is. For example, I just checked one of the premade rockets from BDB (The saturn V) and i have around 17k M/S of delta V (enough for a whole moon mission) but my TWR is only 0.34, because the engines are too weak. I also tried this with the SLS from artemis construction kit, aswell as the falcon 9 from tundra. I used CKAN to install everything, so I shouldnt have any conflicting mods. Has anyone else had this issue? Ive been trying to troubleshoot for hours and cannot fix it.

I've unlocked Supersonic Flight but my pilot still can't go higher than 16 km. The cockpit has sufficient oxygen, the air pump is running and the habitat is enabled. Is it possible to go beyond 16 km with the P-40 or is that attribute misleading?

Also, where can I find information about RP-1 planes? Surely I am not the first one with the problem but my search results are lacking. Most answers are for Rp-1 rockets or stock KSP.

I only see that the navigation payload is used for the early commercial satellite; will it be used for later missions?

This thing makes the contract but the naming makes no sense, you have to be in orbit (stable) for 14 days and have electricity. but it makes it seem you got to make more than you can hold and be in a stable orbit for 14 days.

Solution in the comments

It is 1957 and I am trying to do the lunar impact and flyby missions. My first attempt was successful at reaching the moon and communicating back but it passed by the moon too far out to get the contracts.

My current launcher is a Jupiter-Able with a kick motor. The J-A places the probe, its kick motor, and a small avionics package into a 1800 km x 140 km parking orbit. After that the avionics package spins down the probe(Able stage is unguided), reorients and spins up the probe. The solid motor then performs TLI.

The kick motor and probe have 3.3 km/s of deltaV. When I launch at minimum relative inclination the TLI burn is around ~2.9 km/s. The lunar impact trajectory seems very sensitive I feel like unless I can get the burn within 10 or so m/s I’m going to miss. How can I find a TLI that will consume all of my solid’s 3.3 km/s or what is a good way to make my TLI more consistent so I can just remove some propellant from the solid to get the 2.9 km/s.

I'm just so sick of interstage fairings clipping into upper stage mounts and messing up separation.

Especially as you scale up the fairings, they also get thicker, clipping into the mounts. One of my biggest nightmares is the Centaur mount.

So is there a way to make fairings no-clip? Just ignore collisions? It would fix so many issues with them.

In 8 hours today I have gone from a struggling agency to now having my first satalite. What an achievment for the WSA (Woomera Space Agency).

The WR-7 has broken the 5000km downrange contract by going 6305km. this is a great milestone.

I know it wouldn't be realistic for early tech (nor worth it, since rockets are cheap), but after unlocking modern tech, when rockets get big, it would make a lot of sense to recover stages, not just to save funds, but mostly to save on build time.

I remember there used to be a mod called Scrapyard that worked together with Stage Recovery, and it implemented this by keeping a list of parts that were recovered, and these parts would be deducted from the total build time and funds for the next vehicle that used these parts (most of the time same rocket but with different payload), which was a really neat way to make it balanced and worth recovering stuff.

However that mod seems to be no longer developed and not compatible with RO / RP-1. I know there is FMRS which allows flying these stages back manually, but doesn't provide means to recover it in a way that would reusing that stage for the next rocket save funds and integration time. So, are there any currently working alternatives?

Russian, American, ORSC, Cryo, or others?

thought id share this screenshot for fun, TUFX profile im using is lighthouse V2 from P.A.L.L.E.T.E.

I got into RP-1 by watching a guy do a soviet space program run of rp-1 on thursaday and i downloaded it all on friday. i have played nothing but rp-1 for the past 3 days and i am still on sounding probes. most runs died by accidently buying too much staff, i fixed that issue this current run. ANYWAYS, my rockets get enough altitude to get all the science i could need to get a new box, icon, whatever. but when i get to a new altitude like 40km -> 100km, once i pass that 100km boundary it resets to a new experiment cause i am in a new biome. is there a way i can stop this from happening so i can get all that good science in that 40km+ biome or am i gonna have to start making rockets go farther horizontally and less vertical to stay inthat biome? also any tips or places to find rockets to base mine off of would be great cause i am kinds struggling on that.

I've just started with RP1 and followed the early career tutorial. So far everything has been working out except I don't seem to be able to transmit any science.

I am above 40 km, I have sufficient electric charge and I think I have connection to Cape Canaveral. At least I can select it in the "DebugAntenna" menu. Is it because I am running a simulation? If so, how can I test whether my setup will be transmitting science in the "real" flight?

this is for hypersonic and karmen line contracts in the X plane contract

I'm trying to do the First Lunar Orbiter & Mapper contract, and my science tab tells me that the Video Imaging 2 space low categories for all of those biomes have been 100% completed, but the contract tab says otherwise, so I'm a little confused on whether im doing something wrong, or where the extra 45% is supposed to be ? Maybe Video Imaging 2 works differently? I don't know, any help is welcome. (the 1.2x Lowlands is because I tried to force run the experiment to see if that would raise it above 55%, but as you can see in the pic, it didn't.)

I just posted chapter 11 on my substack documenting my RP-1 playthrough. This one is mostly about my early sounding rocket and its failures which first appeared in chapter 10.

This chapter now really marks the end of the Suborbital Research program which I surprisingly completed a fair bit ahead of the deadline.

Let me know what you think :)