wibou7

My first time was awful! It tooks me about 2 hours... in which I had used every existing variant of curse words and was working into creating new ones. I got the thing to dock by sheer luck, thanks to the magnet effect (may the developer that thought of that feature be blessed a hundred times). In retrospect, my craft was poorly balanced with too many RCS placed way off COM. That was causing it to rotate and pitch where it should have been translating. To make matter worst, I didn't know of the "locked view" setting for the camera, so the translation control weren't mapping what I had in front of me... But docking is a skill and you DO get better with practice! Now docking is a breeze, I do it easily and efficiently. That's one of the few skills were I consider myself being better than MechJeb. Assuming a well made craft, I can dock anything in about 2 minutes, no matter how tight the space is

Except "super" all this can be easily performed without mining. No real challenge for the typical experimented player on the forum. Super offers some challenge, but still not that much to any SSTO expert around here. You may want to rethink that challenge and to make sure it follows this:

No, 0.90 does not count. Between 0.90 and 1.05, the aeorodynamic model changed, the jet engines changed, the air-intakes parts changed and the way all those interact together changed as well. Comparing speed between 0.90 and 1.05 is like comparing speed in two totally different games.

As they say : pictures or it never happened.

No you don't. Read back from the start of this thread, it's been proved pretty conclusively that all engine stop being effective way before that. Hitting 3000m/s is not physically possible, unless you mod. Current record is 1693.6m/s.

To support a mining operation on RTG alone does not seem feasible to me. To support mining operation solely on RTG, you will need a lot of them... ONE Gigantor XL = ~32 RTG. I don't know about your setup, but my mining rig needs 8 Gigantor to run non-stop... So that would mean 256 RTGs. I'd consider the number of parts alone to be a no go (my computer won't run anything over 300 parts) but your computer may be faster than mine. If you are playing career, it also mean a LOT of money (32 RTG is about ~750 000 Kredits, so 256 RTGs is about 6 millions), but again it might not be much concern to you if you are playing science. Heat generation is not much of a concern for ONE RTG but it may very well b an issue for 256 RTGs... I'm not quite sure how to calculate the heat generation for RTG but you will probably need to add a few large radiator array to your setup. That mean TONS of extra-weight... At that point, it seems to me that carrying a dozen of batteries around is still a better idea. Especially if you are only going places where solar panels have good efficiency (i.e. the Mun). Another approach would be to use fuel cell array; you will need to math it right but that would allow you to operate without solar panel. That would probably be required for places where solar panels are not that great (i.e. Jool and beyond). The part/weight/money requirement would still be lower than RTG.

What do you mean by "nuclear batteries"? Do you mean RTG? And about the cooling needed... it depends on where you want to go. A single RTG around kerbin probably won't need anything but may cause issues around Moho, obviously.

You are right, I really smiled that one time. All the rescue missions the other times were fun too

That seems weird to me... Can we see a screenshot of these two contracts? Something is not right. Also... any mod installed?

I've got to try that. It certainly beats the usual "tons of heatshield and airbrakes" technique. I hope it doesn't get broken in 1.1

Interesting idea. But even if wings have high heat tolerance, I doubt they would survive hitting Eve atmo at interplanetary speed outside an heat shield like that... How fast were you going when you first hitted Eve atmo? And there is no way this lander will make it back to orbit. Unless you landed it on very highest peak of Eve. And even then

Can we see your attempt at your own challenge please?

Wait, kerbin PE at 75 797m? That's awfully close... You could send a very small ship with a tremendous TWR to encounter with your sundiver while it is close to Kerbin. Match orbit, then transfer the Kerbal, then burn so your rescue ship get a PE deep (20km?) inside Kerbin atmosphere. If you pack enough heatshield on your rescue ship, it should make it. It shouldn't need that much DV to perform. Hell, if you use the Klaw, you should be able to manage it with the 1200 DV left on the sundiver.

Definitely! If your computer manage to launch those before the heat death of the universe. ...seriously though, how long does it take to launch these? 10-15mins to load VAB probably equal to, what, 18 hours from launchpad to orbit?

Am I the only one impressed by the sheer hugeness of that station project? In the mid two digit kilotons? Even assuming you are only launching full 3.5m tanks, that place the number of parts in the thousand. My computer would probably catch fire if I'd even consider such MASSIVE construction. ...wait, are you Skynet?

Note that the 64bits version of KSP runs fine on Linux. If the memory limit is such an issue for you, you might want to consider switching OS

Don't mock the russian, they have space shotgun. SPACE. SHOTGUN. (ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TP-82

I get this if I click out of the KSP window while it is loading. My guess is that squad generates mouse displacement or click to recenter the camera on the KSC, if the window does not have focus, it fails. Sooo...first make sure the KSP window has focus the complete time it is loading. Then make sure you don't have any mods interfering.

Interplanetary manned missions are easy if you plan them right. If you want your kerbals to make it home,the best tip I can give you is to always plan the missions in two parts. First, send out a full tank of fuel, the biggesr you dare to, to where you want to go. THEN you send the kerbals. The tank serves two purposes. One, it makes sure you have a buffer in case something goes wrong, just plan the mission as if the tank wasn't there and you will always have enough Delta-V to make it home no matter how wrong your estimates went. Two, and most importantly, sending the tank there act as a test of how good your plan / preparation is for the mission. If you can't, or barely make your tank into foreign orbit, if it explodes while aerobreaking or if anything go kerbal, you will know you must go back to the drawing board and revisit your design. If you make it easily, then the manned mission should be a breeze.

I don't see why this wouldn't work... It's hard to guess if you will have enough SAS and/or Gimbal to compensate the drag but that's another question. For very draggy rocket, the trick is to Launch STRAIGHT UP until 25km-35km (depending how much your SAS-Gimbal can overtake the drag). The idea is that once you get to 35km, there isn't much air left to make you spin... THEN you make your (quite abrupt) gravity turn. I launch silly stuff like that (and way worst) all the time. You just have to use the less-than-efficient launch profile I mention and pack up a bit more delta-V to compensate. I plan for ~4500m/s and that's usually enough to make orbit with a little margin even with horribly draggy stuff.

Silly question but is there a way to know what exactly is a speck? I mean, a better way than switching to map view and trying to see what body is in your line of sight? I sometime see some while flying around that does not seem to be the Mun or Minmus. Heck sometime they does not seem to be celestial body at all, I'd swear they are low flying satellites and station if that's even possible with KSP physic engine.

Tss tss Snark, shamelessly pushing your own mod again? ... Well it worked, downloading it right now. I've been wanting to try it for a while, it seems today is the day.

For what I know, parachutes cut as soon as the velocity is 0m/s PLUS a certain "stabilization time". To work around the issue you describe, try to splash down at an angle : the parachutes shouldn't cut until you are flat (i.e. horizontal) in the water. You may need some SAS power to angle, since you will need to counter-act against gravity. Or another would be to place the 'chutes in a non-symetrical way, so the ship get in the water already at an angle. Note that a screenshot of your ship might help people to suggest solution.

Milimeters DOES matter. Surface docking is hard, especially using landing strut; their springs are subject to local gravity and will not be of the same height on Kerbin compared to minmus. First thing first : does your setup works (i.e. can dock) on Kerbin, on the launch pad? If not, it will probably don't work on minmus, although shaking and bumping into the port MAY eventually achieve docking. Hints for future design : ALWAYS test extensively each port with each other port on the Launchpad. And keep in mind that landing strut will not give consistent result on bodies with different gravity. Locking them might help but you'd be better using rover wheel instead.

390 m/s might do it for Minmus if you are efficient AND if you have another engine for orbital manoeuver. However it will NEVER do it on the Mun. (Duna is another story as you could add a sufficient amount of parachutes/airbrakes). However, you are right, you will need a HUGE rocket to get it off Kerbin. Forget about standard launch procedure, you will have to launch straight up until ~25 000m, otherwise the drag will make you spin. And pack a lot more delta-v, probably around 5000m/s for the launch; the drag is going to be very expensive fuel wise.