paladin17

Not sure if this is the correct topic. I'd like to hear some ideas on RO career progression after crewed Moon landings. My initial idea was to land people on Mars and possibly moons of Jupiter. But when I started to assemble the craft that would be capable of such task (the first one), it was quite depressing. There are two problems (kind of related to each other), as I see it: 1) lack of a decent engine for deep space maneuvers and capture/return burns; 2) insane requirements for the initial launch vehicle (to LEO) - which causes the need to assemble the ship in orbit. Since basically the only option for DS maneuvers and such is hypergolics (MMO, Aerozine etc.), it yields quite a big mass in the end. And to kick such big mass into LEO requires a humongously big rocket. I thought nuclear engines would save the day, but they're kind of not. So far I've assembled an Apollo-style martian mission, but with separate nuclear transfer stage (so I had to dock to it in LEO). The ship (super-minimalistic and unrealistic - without any extra crew compartments) consists of command module + lander, 460 tons total, and the transfer stage, also 460 tons, powered by 7 NERVA-II. 460 tons is obviously the LEO capacity of my biggest launcher (16xRD-170 on the first stage and 2xM-1 on the second). So I guess what I'm asking is: is there any way of improving the performance of hypergolics, or perhaps are there any alternatives to them to be used at the later stages of the mission (capture and return)? And is there any alternative for launching tens of times and assembling the interplanetary ship in orbit?

Thanks a lot for the input. The problem indeed seemed to be caused by a screwy install of RP-0. Don't know how that happened though. But anyway, I've cut/pasted out the whole RP-0 folder and put a new one from the GitHub instead. Then I accepted the contract (as it finally appeared), and swapped my previous RP-0 install back. Because this playthrough would have been screwed otherwise: the new tech tree is not compatible with the previous one from my save. And there is some trouble with KSC facilities (like my upgrades are not recognized by the new mod install). But anyway, I'm quite happy I've resolved the immediate problem. This damn contract was preventing me from getting the holy grail contract of crewed landing. Thanks again.

I have exactly the same problem and cannot determine the cause. The contract sits in the RP-0 folder, but the game doesn't seem to recognize it. It's not even on the Mission Control lists. I've done lunar flybys already (maximum possible times).

Well, I'm not sure I understood your question. I've had an upper stage tank with a single AJ-10. I filled the tank with the fuel for this engine, chose the engine type for the tank from its menu (which as I understood meant RCS, given the proposed options) to hydrazine. The "support" slider was set (by default) to 6%, so I kind of figured this meant that 6% of the tank was devoted to RCS fuel. It seems I was wrong, since, as I've said, there was no RCS from this stage in the end. Later on the next launch (after I posted here) I manually filled the tank itself with some hydrazine and then added the fuel for the main engine, and this time RCS worked. But I'm still not sure this is the correct way to do it.

Sorry, if this has been answered earlier or is somewhere in the manuals (is there one?). 1) How do I use built-in RCS from upper stages? Should I add the fuel manually to the tank? There is some slider "support tank", or something. Is this responsible for RCS fuel? I've just launched one such upper stage (without explicitly filling it for RCS) and it had no RCS... 2) And other thing: what does "hollow colliders" option at some of the decouplers mean? 3) Oh, and here's even other one: how do I set the staging for those two-step interstage petal decouplers? As far as I can see, the default staging just decouples the top node (?), not the middle one. Should I use action groups for that? Thanks for the great mod.

Hello. The question is, plainly put, what is the most effective exploration strategy for Jupiter (in terms of getting more science and perhaps some fun along the way)? I'm currently playing RSS/RO/RP-0 build (not sure what the exact versions are, KSP is 1.2.2), and I have a probe that just left Earth's SOI with slightly more than 4k of delta-v on board; its current Jupiter periapsis is ~ 2200 km with an orbit a few degrees off the satellites' plane. Initially, I was planning to capture into satellites' plane and then one by one catch them on flybys. But now I'm more inclined to go more inclined: that is, polar (Juno style). That way I would get all the Jupiter's biomes (closing the Gestalt) and I'd also be able to catch Callisto and Ganymede (perhaps even Europa?) flybys as well (by looking for the encounter at ascending/descending nodes). Then the next probe that would enter the system might not bother with Jupiter, and go for satellites right away (e.g. for orbiting etc.). What do you guys think?