ftunk70

Brought an engineer to repack the chute at Duna, but he was of insufficient level to do just that...

Hi all! I am not suggesting N-body physics. I suggest adding five new spheres of influence per (bigger) celestial object in the game, one for each Lagrange point of the body. At least for Kerbin, Eve, Jool, and Mun. Some new SOIs should be near trivial to implement? It would open up nice possibilities for new contract types, space stations, refueling stations, asteroid parking areas, and what nots. Obviously, the Duna-Ike system is not a good candidate, and both the Dres and Eeloo are too close to Jool to have any stable Lagrange points. And perhaps Kerbin is too close to Eve for stable L4/L5 as well?

I guess it depends on the ballistic coefficient of your craft. A large and light craft will start decelerating higher up in the atmosphere and thus get less heating. The Skylon uses this concept to avoid expensive and heavy heatshields. If your craft is light enough, or slow enough, you won't need a heat shield.

BTW, what are those bulbous bulbs you've got there? Nice payload!

I think it looks like the docking port on the small ship is mounted backwards. Rovers are difficult to dock when the ground is uneven. Try it on the grass at the side of the runway. Or perhaps you have a mod installed that breaks the docking ports? I never had problems with them (except mounting the large docking port backwards), but I havn't gotten around trying them in 1.0.2.

Thanks! Yes, I had some minor clipping too. I actually like that things can get stuck or brake, it adds humour and realism. I didn't like that the game thought I was on the ground as I was about to circularize my orbit!

When I opened my fairing on ~60000m, a piece of it got stuck. The problems continued above 70000m: * Tremendous camera shaking * No visible orbit in map mode * Warnings about travelling on ground I could not shake the fairing piece, but when I ditched the stage it was in, the problems disappeared.

Kuu, I think that if the gas is heavier (say 100% Radon?), then the atmosphere will be more concentrated to lower altitudes? Janos, I think you're probably right. The drag is proportional to air density, but pressure and density goes hand in hand. I guess Duna's atmo could be more viscous? Maybe it's all Higgs?

The drag on Duna is indeed higher than on Kerbin above roughly 35000 m. This is a little bit surprising to me since the pressure is so low on Duna sea level. I guess it would have to do with Duna being smaller and thus not compressing its thin atmosphere at a very high rate. But then I think it is probably premature to end Duna's atmosphere at 50000 m. It should probably extend to 100-150 km. Edit: This also means that the pressure should be higher at those altitudes, since drag is proportional to density, which is proportional to pressure. I realise I should have used the presbat instead of the accelerometer for my measurements, it would have been much easier to measure the pressure rather than the drag directly.

I think it is nice that different kerbals behave differently, especially when you have several on the same mission. It is a nice touch.

Hi all, I had this problem yesterday when leaving Duna. Even in the high upper atmosphere (>30 km), I was losing Ap height at an unexpected rate. Much more so than in Kerbins upper atmosphere. Shouldn't the upper atmosphere on Duna be much thinner than Kerbin's, since it is thinner at sea level. I'd expect the atmo tapering off slower on Duna, but the initial density is so low, the drag should not be measurable at 30+ km height. What do you think? Edit: It has been verified that the atmosphere of Duna has higher drag at 30000 m than that of Kerbin's at 40000 m. These heights are both roughly 60% up to vacuum from sea level.

"Workplace accidents". That's just evil. And very very funny. Well, I saved two more engineers and no pilots. But you're probably right, engineers are best in the long run. No sweat.

I was running low on pilots, so I figured I'd rescue a couple from orbit, but I just keep getting engineers. Is this supposed to happen? Does anyone get pilots? I have eight engineers now, but still no pilots... [edit: I changed the tag to "Answered", because it's basically ok to get 9/9 engineers. Perhaps the game looks at the death rate per profession before determining the rescue missions?]

Interesting idea, PLAD. I hadn't thought about Eve flybys (since it's kind of the other way). I would think a proper Eve gravity assist on the way to Duna might take you to a position in Duna's orbit wherefrom it is easy to go back to Kerbin. Using Eve on the way back seems hard to plan, since you must know where all three planets will be? Scotius, well done! I thought Mun gravity assists don't work because Oberth, but it's nice when it works out like that.

I tried to find a quick route to Duna because I hate to wait for the launch window back to Kerbin. Going to Duna using Hohmann transfer orbits takes forever. First, it takes 0.7y just to get there. Then you have to wait for Kerbin to realign, which takes another 1.5y. Then you need to go home taking 0.7y, which totals about 2.9y. However, I just realized there is another way: If you do your ejection burn out of Kerbin to get your Duna encounter just under 90 degrees ahead, you end up on a big elliptic orbit with periaps at Kerbin and apoaps at roughly 45 Gm, beyond Dres. This orbit takes 0.25 y to get to Duna, so when you arrive Kerbin is just overtaking Duna on the inside. This means you can use the same orbit, but mirrored, to get back to Kerbin in another 0.25 y without further await. So the total round trip time is half a year! Only one sixth food and oxygen required! You'll be back at Kerbin before the Hohmann dude has even arrived at Duna! The Kerbin ejection burn requires roughly 1200 m/s delta-v over the Hohmann ejection burn, and you burn so that your exit vector is along the Kerbin orbit around the sun, as usual. When returning from Duna however, you must burn straight towards the sun and the required delta-v is over 3000 m/s . Now, this route is clearly not optimal, the assymetric ejection burns tells me. But there could be a route requiring about 3000 total extra delta-v compared to Hohmann transfer that takes about 0.5 y and does not require waiting at Duna. What do you think? I'm sure someone knows more about this