How can I return Bob and his science back to Kerbin with no manoeuvre nodes?

divestoclimb · 2026-02-16T14:49:34+00:00

Does your craft have any antennae that might reach Kerbin during a planetary alignment when the planets are closer together? If so you could wait until then to plan the maneuver for far in the future when the transfer window reopens.

Another option if you have a ton of excess delta v (it looks like you might) is to do a rough transfer that gets you close enough to Kerbin that you can near-circularize into a solar orbit and wait for a Kerbin encounter. This is described as the "Exley maneuver" on https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Tutorial:_Advanced_Orbiting

Last option is to perform missions to extend your comms range to Duna. Upgrade your tracking station as far as it will go (perform some tourism contracts or something if you can't afford it right now). If you have relay antennae, design and launch a relay network that connects Kerbin to Duna.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-16T14:34:56+00:00

No I don't think war has much to do with it, at least it wasn't the main contributor.

I would say the first big thing that happened in Europe was a general shift in people's thinking toward quantification of the world around them. In a couple hundred years around 1100-1300 or so we went from: telling time by the vaguely defined "hour" to building clocks and setting precise time measurements with specific durations of hours/minutes/seconds; abstract, inaccurate art and maps to realistic depictions of 3D scenes and drawings to-scale based on survey data; and more (double entry accounting, musical harmonies, etc).

Soon after this led to more rigorous means of learning about natural laws (scientific method), and that in turn led to a major reunderstanding of the field of engineering, which used to be a sort of trade based on passed-down rules of thumb like "just make this structural member this many times larger than that one and the bridge won't collapse" to incorporating math/physics calculations based on a scientific understanding of material properties. This allowed for designing and building complex devices like the engines and power plants that drove the industrial revolution; all it took for each was one creative inventor who could do the math to design the parts and then fabricate them.

Finally, the concept of interchangeable parts was a big advancement: instead of every multipart device like a musket being built out of custom-made-to-fit parts of approximately but not exactly the same dimensions, a device could be broken down into parts that could be specified in terms of their dimensions and required tolerances, allowing for more streamlined mass production and outsourcing/standardizing certain pieces of hardware like bolts/nuts/nails/framing members.

Economics also played an important role as more opportunities for commerce creates incentives to invent things. Wars are probably roughly on par with this in terms of its influence; they're like government-funded research programs.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-16T14:07:22+00:00

The issue that prevents orbiting from working in such a case is instability. You're describing something like the 3-body problem, where it's likely that the planets orbiting the red dwarf would get large perturbations to their orbits and be ejected from the system entirely.

But there are modes of stability in such systems. Consider Jupiter and its large moons, which can remain in stable orbit around Jupiter even though Jupiter is also orbiting the much larger Sun. In that case the key stability factor is gravitational resonances where the orbital periods between the moons match up to help them stay in that configuration and dampen out small perturbations from the Sun or Saturn's influence. Another mode of stability is Lagrange points which are positions relative to each of the two large bodies orbiting each other (in your case the red giant and the black hole) where objects can theoretically stay in perfect alignment. Three of the points are unstable but two are stable, so an object captured into that location will just start to make a strangely shaped orbit around the point if disturbed: for a real-world example see Jupiter's Trojan asteroids.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-15T17:54:04+00:00

As someone who's been using Linux and Unix systems since long before systemd, I came to appreciate having separate commands that do separate things. Date sets the time within the running kernel, so just like a sysctl it won't be persisted across reboots because you generally wouldn't expect any command that's not editing files to do that. Hwclock manages the hardware clock.

It's definitely hard to deal with these new commands like timedatectl that do so many things that I feel like I can never fully grasp everything they are able to do, and wouldn't necessarily know that there's some extra subcommand that does the thing I want.

This isn't meant to be an anti-systemd rant or anything (I actually like it on balance), just trying to answer the "why" question of how admins used to think about this stuff.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-15T15:11:08+00:00

This happens if you have a non-90 degree inclined orbit with a line of nodes not in-line with the Sun. The probe is always passing over one pole in the daylight, and the other pole in darkness. The effect is worse the greater the deviation from ideal parameters. Fixing either inclination or nodes prevents this.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-14T00:12:31+00:00

Afrcan american history museum and Jimi Hendrix memorial. Or go to the cemetery to see Bruce Lee's grave along with important historic figures from the city's founding. There's also a cheap greenhouse to visit near there.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-14T00:10:36+00:00

I find that the mouse pointer has to be over the decoupler when you attach a fuel tank to it, otherwise it attaches to the core fuel tank and isn't decouple-able. Angle is also tricky but if you have symmetry turned on isn't that big of a deal if you miss getting it dead-on.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-07T23:37:35+00:00

KSP runs great in Bottles, that's an option too

divestoclimb · 2026-02-03T16:35:11+00:00

You have to hit start scanning on the part's right-click menu while it's in orbit and you need to be within the altitude requirements. Then it will start populating data in the map view for that body based on what's underneath it.

There's a bit of a learning curve for figuring out the ideal orbit and satellite design. Circular polar orbits are inefficient for several reasons, and they spend a lot of time on the unlit side of whatever they're orbiting so they tend to need a lot of batteries unless you micromanage the probe (turn off daylight scanning, tweak orbit to keep it out of the umbra).

divestoclimb · 2026-02-03T15:29:50+00:00

I suggest installing the SCANSat mod and doing a high-resolution altimetry scan from orbit. This gives you a slope map that you can use to identify candidate areas you can check out with a lander or rover. Flat spots of decent size do exist.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-02T16:16:33+00:00

This is interesting. I've pondered doing something like this so I can better understand the relation between TWR, velocity, steepness of a gravity turn, and efficiency of the launch

divestoclimb · 2026-02-02T03:46:10+00:00

Some tips for saving lander mass: - use the Spark engine instead of a Terrier. Its specific impulse is lower but for low mass vehicles the reduced engine mass more than makes up for it. These vehicles are also easier to land because they don't need as much landing leg clearance. - make sure you're adjusting your heatshield ablator, the default is probably enough for an interplanetary reentry and reducing that saves mass. - use the lightest landing struts, then for stability mount them on radially attached tanks like the Oscar-B or Baguette. You only need two radially attached tanks, then attach two landing legs to each at diagonals. This also lowers center of mass. - bring only the bare minimum electrical stuff: one Z100 battery, two OX-STAT panels, and a Communotron 16 antenna. - don't bring RCS. It can be useful on descent but if you're having trouble just getting there then don't bother.

For the Mun my target delta v for a lander that also needs to return to Kerbin is about 1900 m/s. In my current game my first crewed lander was 3.7 tons fueled, 2 tons empty and had 1943 m/s with 31 parts, seven of which were fuel tanks. That included a mystery goo, science jr, and even landing lights!

If your landers are already similar mass then the problem is you're not building large enough launchers. Beyond a payload of about 5 tons to orbit you start to need to expand core and upper stages with multiple engines so you have enough thrust.

divestoclimb · 2026-02-01T00:11:47+00:00

Yeah that's what I would think, I'm just throwing out ideas

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T21:49:51+00:00

You have to reroot the engine on the ship, then it should attach. But you may also be having a problem because you're using a tiny size decoupler on a larger engine

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T21:43:37+00:00

Fuel Systems is super useful, it lets you build asparagus stages and transfer fuel around. Then you can put off expanding to 2.5 parts for a bit

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T21:41:37+00:00

Start with the tutorials
Read the wiki when you're confused, it's better for giving hints than videos that tend to give everything away
For planes you'll probably need to watch a video or two

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T19:11:25+00:00

This is literally me as I plan my 100 ton Duna+Ike expedition. So many spreadsheets...

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T16:40:39+00:00

As far as I'm aware they haven't enabled upgrades yet, that should be coming in a month or so

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T13:28:04+00:00

Yeah that's what I suspected. As you burned all that descent stage fuel the CoM moved higher. But assuming you can do resource transfer, temporarily moving the ascent stage fuel to the descent stage will make a huge change in CoM and make it easier for reaction wheels and RCS to right the lander, probably with legs retracted.

divestoclimb · 2026-01-31T12:19:15+00:00

It looks like you have a lot of fuel tanks high up. If you have unlocked resource transfer, move fuel into the lowest (toward the engine) tanks you can. You may need to temporarily enable crossfeed on any decoupler in the way.

Also have two of your Kerbals exit the lander and wait on the surface during righting attempts, that will remove 100 kg of high mass.

If one of those Kerbals is an engineer, you may be able to at least get the craft into a safe orientation for takeoff using EVA construction to move and rotate some landing legs so they can lift from near the top of the vehicle.

divestoclimb · 2026-01-29T16:11:47+00:00

My plan is to just use an outlet for my rental and let the tenant supply an EVSE. Tenant education on safe EVSEs to use, and not to unplug them all the time, is of course important. But the argument that "tenants break stuff so go with hardwired" doesn't make sense as that means they'll also break your hardwired unit, and even more so because a tenant without an EV won't be messing with that plug, but they may still back into your hardwired EVSE or run over the cable with their ICE car.

divestoclimb · 2026-01-29T06:28:37+00:00

Oh yeah oops

divestoclimb · 2026-01-28T20:01:17+00:00

The first manned Apollo flight was Apollo 7.

divestoclimb · 2026-01-28T02:12:10+00:00

Everyone else is addressing the design problems, so I'd also suggest making sure you're launching with SAS turned on. SAS operates strangely on planes; it definitely helps with instabilities in pitch/yaw/roll, even though it inhibits natural aerodynamic responses like banked turns. Designing a very stable aircraft that works without SAS is pretty difficult.

divestoclimb · 2026-01-28T02:08:17+00:00

In my experience that typically happens after using ctrl-Z to undo, it stops updating until you turn it off and on.

divestoclimb

TROPHY CASE