Ripper2900

Laythe's atmosphere is smaller than Kerbin's, but it is only thinner in the low parts! Above a couple of thousand meters, it's actually thicker! And it gets thicker much faster than Kerbin's, when you enter from space. Jet engine flight is thus possible much higher than on kerbin, and aerobraking is easier/quicker, dependant on how you look at it... You do need bigger wings or more parachutes for the final descent though. Good luck.

I haven't tried myself, but I think you could: 1. start with a beam, or start with some other part, then the beam. 2. Make sure that beam is the root part. 3. Attach one end of your twin fuselage to it (with twin symmetry) 4. Strut the other end of the fuselage together. This way, the root would be the spine of your craft, even if it's just a very small spine; a beam or a girder or similar. Good luck.

I suggest you go look in the Jool-5 thread in the Challenges forum. It's a long thread, so be wary that some designs from the early posts might be outdated. Personally, I've done it twice, both with non-nuclear rockets, so it's not impossible. One advice I'll give, is to make a very large and powerful booster for the initial kick out of the Kerbin system, and then detaches. It's easy to get it into orbit at Kerbin, and it will leave a lot of dv for your interplanetary craft, so you don't have to arrive at Jool with a half-empty hulk that is expensive and difficult to maneuver.

The small ISRU is super for your needs of small hopper - if you have enough time! But the in ksp is pretty much the only thing that comes for free... I've made several Jool-5 capable landers with the 1.25 isru and 2 small drills. Power provided by 2-6 rtgs and you can mine away - slowly. But the game mechanics are made so that if you use time acceleration at 1000x or more, you're probably just burning time, and thus the electricity comes for free! It gets generated by the two rtgs at a higher rate than the mining/refining can consume. http://m.imgur.com/a/YvGhw Here's the lander/tanker of my latest mission. It's fully capable of landing 4 kerbals on Tylo, and with a separate aerodynamic nose, also on Laythe, so Dres should be no problem. Happy mining

I just completed my second Jool-5 run. With S.L.A.C.K.E.R - Single-Lander Asymmetric Configurated Kerbal Exploration Rocket The new-built craft owes much to my last modular approach (SMACKER http://imgur.com/a/YvGhw Here's a description of the lander carrying 4 kerbals. A 5th pilot stayed on the interplanetary tug during the first two moons, but swapped seats with Valentina for the remaining 3 moons, so this mission should qualify as a Level-3 (isru) entry, right? A full mission report album will follow along with a formal description as soon as i have sorted and described the sceenshots... That took some time, as i reflew some of the mission. This time all kerbals landed on Pol and Bop, with only Valentina staying back for the three inner moons. Also: better screenshots this time. Hope you like it! This mission was made in KSP 1.2 aiming to upgrade my previous Jool-5 level-2 to a level-3.

Note that Laythe's atmosphere may be shallower than Kerbin's, and the density is lower at sea-level. But from about 10000m, it's in fact denser! This implies that you can use jets at higher altitudes before flameout, but you get HOT if you accelerate to orbital speeds with jets in the middle altitudes. I advise that you do a slow initial ascent followed by a relatively steep final ascent to get out of that drag and heat quickly.

For deepspace missions, it's usually a good thing to have a couple of highly elliptical, highly inclined com-relays. They're almost never occluded , and for most of the time, they will be in ksp contact.

Depends hugely upon which body you mine - and on chance. Some moons or planets have quite even distributed ore deposits, and finding hotspots that are much above the average is hard. Others has large areas of "sweet-spots". Land, surface- scan, and do some narrow and scanning to find good spots. 6-15% are what I go for.

Remember the most important thing: Click caps lock! The rcs will be put in proportional mode, so you can make tiny adjustments with short click and the thrust will grow higher the longer you keep pressing. Also the rcs will be balanced to a large degree, so you won't induce turning while trying to translate.

The difficulty and thus the money payout of the mission is based on your reputation. Get some world firsts which raises reputation: Get in orbit, flyby the Mun and such, and you'll see more 3 stars contracts pop up. That being said, i also go the "spend science to earn science" road. The first tech i unlock from a new tier (or even from the next tier again) is those who unlocks new science-items. A word of advice: as soon as you can, get the science-lab, put it in Mun or Minmus orbits and fill it with two scientists and lots of data. That baby will produce 5 times as much science as would normally be returned. The rate is determined by the xp of the scientists working inside - it will increase a lot with multi-star scientists. But just 1-star scientists will provide a steady trickle. This will help getting more techs, which will allow more world-firsts which will make higher profile missions pop up, and before you know it that tech tree is full...

Well aesthetics are another question, which probably has as many answers as there are kerbals (a couple of 100's maybe ). Perhaps show off a lander which looks nice to you, and then ask Wernher Von Kerman or other members of this forum how to increase its Tylo'ability.

I saw somewhere that the drag of pointy objects in general has been reduces, while blunt objects has increased drag. I've done only a few planes so far, but my experience with reentry vehicles, is that they generally starts to slow down at lower altitudes than in v1.1, and that they then slow much quicker. This means that i've begun using steeper descents. For you, i guess you'd have to move your "high altitude" higher to see the real benefit. The 10-12K is not very high in my world. I flew some tests earlier with a panther engine, and that plane only really started to accelerate at 14-15K and continued nicely to at least 20-22k approx.

This baby can land, refuel and takeoff again as a single stage. It's made in two parts, so the top section can be swapped for other modules (or left behind) when landing on other bodies. It has 2 small drill and a small ISRU for refuelling purposes, and it can land 4 kerbals and takeoff from all Kerbol/system bodies *(in ver1.1) except Kerbin and Eve, and it uses an expendable aerodynanic nose-mounted fueltank instead of the bulk tank in the screenshot when doing Laythe.

The spread is so the individual chutes will offset to the side instead of clipping into each other, as they did in 1.1. Looks much better when you use 2 or 3 (or more) chutes. I personally find that keeping my reentry stage light and not coming in too steep gives me the best results with the new drag and heating values. Set the chutes to deploy "when safe", and they'll pop out as soon as they're ready. Even if you activate them in the midst of flaming, they'll wait.

At least in 1.1 as soon as you start time warping above X1000, you enter "on rails" electricity, and the isru and drills doesn't use much. I've powered my entire Big Trip with just two Rtgs. You just need to ensure that you have enough batteries to power the rig while accelerating to 1000x