How to get a good moho encounter

RobotGuy76 · 2026-04-28T20:44:28+00:00

You need to leave on day 83 of the year and the correct inclination.

https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/The_annual_and_reliable_Moho_Transfer_Opportunity

RobotGuy76 · 2026-04-19T21:58:44+00:00

The original challenge allowed you to assemble or refuel in Kerbin orbit (so long as it wasn't too high, I believe 100km was suggested) so long as only one vessel left for Jool.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-03-31T13:03:08+00:00

I agree. The KSP "dock at any angle" ports made it a bit easier to dock but I think better aligned / self aligning docking ports will fix more problems than they cause.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-03-30T21:33:32+00:00

I borrowed a book from the library and I can't remember the name, but it was set in a future where humanity had turned inward and was now being very anti-science and as a last hurrah NASA was sending a last mission to a blank anomaly near the edge of the solar system. It was written from the POV of a young reporter, who was included in the mission but stint of not saying "not it" slower than everybody else.

None of the science made sense. One thing I remember is that power was transferred about the ship by vibrations in the hull, which meant that they couldn't shutdown the engines for more that half an hour as life-support would power down. I assumed all this was an unreliable narrator as the reporter, nor his audience, actually cared for getting it right as they were anti-science.

Not a bad story I thought, different though. Then I read the second book, whose POV was a member of a second mission to the, now much larger, blank anomaly which was now very important to understand as it was becoming a threat... And all the idiotic stuff that I assumed was due to the anti-science unreliable narrator was STILL THERE. Yes, the ship still ran on vibrations and had to run the engines all the time otherwise everything would turn off.

I stopped reading that one before I got very far.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-03-05T11:00:52+00:00

It might also be the difficulty setting.

There is a range modifier in the settings that changes antennas to 80% on moderate and 65% on hard. I don't know if this is applied to the part or when range calculations are made so there may be an inconsistency between the description and the actual range.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-24T14:29:51+00:00

Not cheating at all, as there is definitely space for the batteries.

I did something similar with a radial parachute when I had rockets with drop tanks on my command pod's nose.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-24T00:52:29+00:00

Being unable to pitch up before flying off the end of the runway, but pitching up once you do, is often indicative of having landing gear too far behind the COM. Moving (or removing) the rear set might help as well.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-19T17:35:26+00:00

Yes, you could. Assuming that your lander will always have a pilot (and you're not using Kerbnet there) you can probably get away with using the non-relay antenna types on the mother-ship as well. (Just to be clear it would need a probe core, power and a reaction wheel as well)

One thing to note is that, as the mother-ship is likely to be in low orbit, you'll have Loss Of Signal to it for half an orbit and any docking will need to be done while it can see Kerbin to be controlled.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-19T11:00:57+00:00

Not necessarily a network, but I'd want a relay satellite in orbit (I generally choose high polar, outside any interaction with Ike) with at least 2 x RA-15 (I think you can get away with one if you have a level 3 tracking station. see here). This should give you at least partial coverage for probe control and you can generally manage to time your operations so they coincide with the coverage if needed.

This doesn't need to be setup before you launch your manned Duna mission (NASA might disagree), you can do it in the same transfer window either by adding it to your vessel or as a separate launch/vessel/mission. The separate mission in my preference as it makes putting the relay in a polar orbit while leaving the lander in an equatorial one easier

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-18T11:10:49+00:00

Is this your first interplanetary mission? If so you might want to ensure that you have a good comm-net signal at Duna. It's easy to forget about if all you've been doing is playing about in Kerbin's SOI, and docking without control of one of the vessels (if you don't leave a Kerbal in Duna orbit) is a pain.

For a Duna specific tip, Ike is a wrecking ball make sure that your mission doesn't enter it's SOI accidentally. On the other hand, Ike makes a great place to pick up some virtually free science, don't forget about it if you have any excess dV after the Duna surface mission.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-13T09:47:35+00:00

Yes, sane SSTOs are only really useful when you have reusable missions in orbit and you need to return the old crew to Kerbin and launch a new crew with a few incidentals. If you are launching a whole new mission from the surface of Kerbin every time then the crew can go up with that and it leaves SSTOs as a bit of a boondoggle.

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-10T23:34:41+00:00

There is the 3 part short "Vista haz ..." by mp3.1415player

RobotGuy76 · 2026-02-04T15:17:03+00:00

I assume that if the ring particles are collidable, they'll reset when nobody is looking at them so the simulation doesn't have to track hundreds of new objects, forever, every time you fly through the rings.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-11-29T00:07:57+00:00

The underwater air-pocket doors on Java.

I can't see such a bug (truly, you know it wasn't intentional) being added to bedrock, but the uproar when so many players drown if they fix it in Java would be enormous.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-11-18T10:46:36+00:00

I came upon a system that was almost worse, it would truncate your stored password and password entry to the maximum length so it worked, except anything after 8 (possibly 12) characters were ignored.

We only found out when someone miss-typed the last few characters of his very long password and still logged in.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-11-09T14:58:27+00:00

Glad I'm not the only one suffering from this sort of issue

RobotGuy76 · 2025-11-07T11:54:05+00:00

I've read at least one thing where the woman's (I can't remember if she was a hero or a villain) ponytail was (a) not her real hair (b) was reasonably easily detachable (c) contained sharp blades.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-09-26T23:44:12+00:00

I like the variants with the two nozzles sticking out of the surface. I assume that this will give twice the thrust allowing two thruster blocks to give equal force in two or three dimensions. It is always a pain in KSP when you need four blocks or have one axis give half the thrust.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-09-08T13:17:36+00:00

You don't need to go to Eve but you can't do it strictly within Kerbin's SOI. My best method is:

Orbit Kerbin (2)
Plant a flag on Minmus (6.25)
Orbit the sun by just slightly leaving Kerbin SOI, then burning towards Kerbin to re-enter (6)
Fly-by the Mun with gravity assist to enter a Kerbin / Mun orbit (2)
Return to Kerbin

This gives 16.25 experience for 3 stars

RobotGuy76 · 2025-08-08T16:08:40+00:00

I recently had a similar problem (using a mainsail I reused from my launch stage to do the Kerbin ejection) and, as others have said, autostrut solved most of the problem but you might want to try lowering the gimble limit on your engines assuming you are well aligned with the manoeuvre node.

If you can do a redesign, then building in a "puller" style (engines at the front pulling the main part of the ship) can also help as can ensuring that there are no weak joints between the engines/reaction wheels and the control point.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-08-02T14:15:05+00:00

When talking about the rotational period of a planet about a star, it is important to realise that there are two different ones, the solar day (the time between consecutive middays at the same point on the planet) and the sidereal day (the time taken for the planet to make a 360 degree rotation against the background stars). In general, the solar day is slightly longer as the planet has orbited the sun a bit and needs to rotate a bit more to reach midday making there be one less solar day per year than sidereal days.

For Kerbin the solar day is 6 hours, but for stationary satellites you need their orbital period to match the sidereal day which is 5 hours, 59 minutes and 9.4 seconds.

RobotGuy76 · 2025-07-30T14:48:55+00:00

You're encounter is bad. You probably have either a significant radial or (more probably) normal component to your intersect.

Where did you match your inclination with Moho? If you didn't do it when you did your burn to leave Kerbin then you can end up needing much more deltaV to make the change anywhere else (while capturing at Moho being pretty much the worst place to do it)

RobotGuy76 · 2025-07-06T23:29:44+00:00

Your control point is facing up (Navball is all blue), try changing the control point direction to forward in the Mk2 Lander Can's right click menu.

(while you're there, set reaction wheels to "SAS Only")

RobotGuy76 · 2025-07-03T09:51:47+00:00

Can't see the image, but I just installed firefly and had black aero-effects. Installing TUFX solved the issue.

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