Aegolius13

Getting to the Eve system is quite easy, with only about 1,000 m/s burn required. Once you get there, though, you have to either aerobrake (which gets very hot) or put up with a fairly hefty burn to get into low orbit (the map says 1,300 m/s). I usually just go for the latter, since it takes a bit of complexity over what is already a complicated mission. The orbiter shouldn't take anything special, particularly if you elect not to aerobrake. The lander, however, has a number of challenges just getting to the surface: The first is the massive reentry heat. Anything not protected by a heat shield is as good as dead. The second issue is aerodynamic stability once you hit the thicker atmosphere. Since heat shields tend to be very draggy, flipping is very common, and normal countermeasures like RCS can easily be overwhelmed. Many people solve this by putting some inflatable heat shields at the back of the craft, just to add drag. The new robotics parts may have opened some options for homemade airbrakes here. It also helps to transfer any available fuel to the forward-facing end of the ship. The third issue is getting your ship ready to land, which means getting oriented right, ditching the heat shield, and getting chutes to deploy. You may find that when you detach a heat shield, it flies up an into your ship (since the shield is much lighter/draggier than the rest of the ship). There are various ways of dealing with this, like using separatrons or similar to dislodge it, or dropping the heat shield while it's facing sideways or up. Oh, and chutes tend to get glitchy on Eve. In particular I'd be leery of saving while your chutes are out. Trying to load that save may cause... problems. The fourth issue is landing your ship in one piece. You pretty much have to hope for a landing site that's flat-ish, though the more stable your lander is built, the less of a big deal this is. The high gravity and heavy masses involved have a habit of breaking landing legs. Options here are to include extra legs in case some break, design very sturdy legs (looks like you're on this), and/or use engines to soften the landing as much as possible. And then once you're landed, if you want to plant a flag and all that, you'll need a way to get your Kerbal to ground and back. Many people like to put a small crew module at the bottom of the lander so the kerbal can be transferred close to ground. . It's common to put everything not needed for the ascent (chutes, landing legs, Kerbal egress, etc) on decouplers and drop it before taking off. Ladders are not recommended unless you ditch them before takeoff, since they're very draggy ----------- With all that, you'll likely be starting out with a large, convoluted package on the launchpad, but it's still essentially a regular launch. Strategic use of fairings may help with aerodynamic and heat issues. One thing I like to do -- a typical Eve lander (including yours) tends to have some very powerful, efficient engines packed on it. I like to put those engines to work on the Kerbin launch and/or transfer to Eve, with detachable fuel tanks, instead of separate engines from those stages. This can avoid even more size and complexity, but it can require some unusual designs.

Huh? Are you looking for ideas on how to get these things into Kerbin orbit? Or how to get from there to Eve orbit, or both?

You wouldn't have to put engines on the round adapter itself; if you have any surface on the the ship with parallel sides, that would work. But if all you have to work with is curved sides, then yeah, this would not keep you stationary.

You could include two engines or thrusters pointing in opposite directions. Firing them both would use fuel but not move you.

Nope, unless I'm looking to specifically do one for a challenge. I find that generally they're not worth the time spent (both my time and in-game time), or the legwork to get just right. For example, in a good window you can do an LKO to Jool transfer burn at about 2,000 m/s. Going from Kerbin to Eve, just to start the gravity assist process, is at least 1,000 m/s. So the savings (is going to be under 1,000 m/s, and could be substantially less than that depending on how many correction burns are needed. The one exception is to capture around the Jool system - I almost always do a "reverse" assist around Tylo or Laythe. These are not nearly as picky, don't take much in-game time, and can save at least a few hundred m/s. Honestly, I'd suggest mastering regular maneuvers before look at gravity assists as a way to save (other than the Jool moons as mentioned above). To get assists to work efficiently, you need to be very precise with maneuvers and timing, and can easily end up spending net delta-v if things go amiss. And I've found both the theory and practice of gravity assists to make more and more sense as I learned more about orbital mechanics through gameplay. This is not my forte, but I understand there's a mod/tool called Flyby finder to help with this. The only time I did a gravity assist on the way to Jool, I used Kerbin (rather than Eve) to get the assist, similar to the real-life Juno probe. This is quite a bit easier to plan, as you can launch one year prior to the Kerbin-Jool launch window, get into a different (but same period) orbit around the Sun, and then get the assist right at the launch window.

Not gonna say it's impossible, but I have never gotten a wing with anywhere near that many segments to stay intact. You could try to use fewer, bigger wing pieces, like BigS wings in alternating directions. For the biggest planes I typically do a biplane or something similarly non-realistic. I figure that's a fair tradeoff for the limited wing options the game gives you.

Definitely. Just take the file you want and copy it into the following folder: Kerbal Space Program\saves\[save name]\Ships\VAB for rockets, or Kerbal Space Program\saves\[save name]\Ships\SPH for planes However, if you haven't unlocked all the parts, you'll get a message as such and won't be able to fly it. I don't think there's a way to get around that without editing game-wide files. You could cheat yourself up some science points and unlock nodes, but that doesn't sound like what you want either.

Yes, essentially, though hatches aren't always reliable markers. Some pods have multiple hatches, some have hatches on the sides (e.g., the cockpits), and the probe cores of course are pretty symmetrical. By default the game always lines up pods/cores the same way, so if you plunk down your primary pod/core as your first part, it should be pretty reliable. Things can get trickier when you're adding on detachable craft, of course.

Do you mean to ultimately get into Pol orbit? I've noticed similar things, at least on Laythe and Tylo. If you encounter the moon with the trajectories tangent (i.e., while it's travelling in the same direction you are), you're taking full advantage of the moon's rotational velocity around the planet. Kinda like how it's easier to catch a ball if you move your hand back as you catch it -- the difference in relative velocity is smaller. A less-than-ideal gravity assist may give up as much of this benefit as it gains in apo/peri adjustment, especially once you factor in maneuvering burns. And your approach certainly saves a lot of work over plotting an ideal assist. I would think the outer moons would provide less of a benefit here than, say, Tylo or Laythe, since their orbital speed is lower (though of course YOUR orbital speed around Jool would be somewhat lower as well. And since their gravity is lower, the Oberth effect won't soak up as much of the delta-v needed to get into capture around Jool and ultimately the target moon. I don't really follow with Gilly, though, as there's nothing else in Eve's SOI to get a gravity assist from, so no alternative to compare too.

My limited experience with IVA piloting has been, to quote Mr. Indiana Jones: Fly, yes. Land, no.

I think if OP's gotten to the point where the chutes fully deploy, this isn't the problem. Agreed; for anything in Kerbin's SOI you can get by with little or no ablator. (Even without, the heat shield has very high heat tolerance, and not that much heat is going to leak up to your craft.) You can also drop the heat shield entirely via the right-click menu; it does not require another decoupler. However, it does provide some "lithobraking" value in absorbing impact energy. Not too heavy; 1.2 tons with those parts seems right. And I don't think the problem is too fragile either. A single chute should slow a craft like that to like 5 m/s; I think you're having lack of drag. Are you sure you're using normal parachutes and not drogue chutes? The latter can open at higher speeds, but provide much less drag, so you would want at least one regular chute to finish touchdown.

As far I as I can think of, the only things that require radiators (outside of deliberately bizarre builds) are: 1. Drills 2. ISRU Converters 3. Stuff in low solar orbit Nuclear ENGINES used to heat up enough long-term to be a problem, but that hasn't been the case for a long time. RTGs are perfectly fine heat-wise.

I'd say mostly based on the geometry of you're trying to create. The G-11 type hinges let you move 90 degrees to each side from ("top") (i.e., if the mounting node is "bottom." The G-32 opens like a book, in one direction. Personally I've been using the first time more for cranes, grabber arms and the like, and the alligator hinges for deployable parts.

Not an ideal answer, but you can always send a Kerbal out to pack up the experiment.

That's been my experience -- bigger hinges can move bigger loads, and seem to do it more smoothly.

Do you have your blades deploying at the same level, and in opposite directions? I'm not so good with the physics involved, but possibly it has to do with the fact that the two rotors are not at the same distance from the CoM, so you're getting different leverage effects? [EDIT - thinking about it more I think the latter makes sense. Tail rotors are mounted as far back as possible so that they can be as small as possible, and still counter the torque from the main rotor. You may be inadvertently getting the same effect, but with equal size rotors the one further from COM overpowers the other one. See generally https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_inertia]

I've also noticed the Science Jr. is very draggy as of late, whether it's open or closed. Almost wonder if it's a bug. But the placement of said part could be contributing to the drag issue. Putting it near the back as in @Foxster's revamp, should improve stability.

It sounds to be like the part is generating too much drag, if it's sticking out from a 1.25 meter rocket stack. Do you have the 1.25 meter fairing unlocked? If so, you could try to build a fairing around the point, and then bring it to a pointy tip. Thrust-to-weight ratio.

The re-root tool should do the trick. Click the tool, then click any part other than what you want to be the new root. The ship should have a blue outline. THEN click what you want to me the new root part. Another way to do it would be via sub-assemblies (you can see these by expanding the part menu at the upper left corner of the VAB screen. This does not require re-rooting. What you'd do here is: grab the top part of everything you want to transfer to the new build, drag it to the sub-assembly drop zone, and give it a name. Then you can go to your lander build, click the sub-assembly, and attach it to your lander as though the whole thing were a single part.

Moho does not impose any specific design constraints; you just need oodles and oodles of delta-v. Two main options: 1. Build a normal-ish orbiter but keep weight to a bare minimum. Put a good heatshield with full ablator and you should be able to return to Kerbin without a braking burn. Keep adding stages to the back end until you have an appropriately-absurd amount of delta-v. Your top stage could be a Spark or something, but you'll probably want to rely mostly on nukes behind that (once you reach LKO), of course. Ideally you'll be able to stage off empty fuel tanks and engines along the way. 2. Build an ion-powered orbiter. Moho is a great place to do this; since the sun is so strong you can get by with way fewer solar panels than normal. This makes for a very light ship that's much easier to launch. TWR is going to be horrendous, though, so you will likely need to do some burns outside of the Moho SOI, and split orbit burns into multiple passes. Weight reduction is even more important here, unless you want to go on hour-long burns. When I build stuff like this, I usually use a chemical stage to leave Kerbin, since solar panels would not be powerful enough. You could also pack some expendable LFO tanks with fuel cells for this part, though. Gilly: Since Gilly's gravity is practically nil, delta-v is a non-issue here. And you can (and probably should) use small engines so you can have some fine control over your maneuvers. Some people use RCS thrusters only; I find it's easier just to use a little engine like an Ant. The trickiest part is getting your lander to stay on the ground rather than bounce; hitting the ground with minimal velocity helps. The new Breaking Ground friction surfaces might help here, but I haven't tried them for this.

Can you elaborate on when and how it's happening? It is just when you apply engine thrust, or all the time, or randomly? Does it go slowly off target or does it start flipping like crazy? Hold the alt button when adding the engine; this will force it to attach to the node of the part above, which means it will be centered. The Dart can be attached directly to any surface, unlike most engines, so it would be easy to place off-center by accident.

I agree they make great radial boosters. But one other application I don't see very often around here -- using the small radial engines to act as verniers for the Reliant / Kodiak / Dart. If you're gentle with maneuvers, you can get the necessary attitude control with just a couple Spiders. And they're cheap, light, more consistent than aero surfaces, and provide a little bonus thrust. ISP is not great apart from the Cub, but their consumption is so small the net effect is negligible. And not like it's not without real-world precedent, since that's how the venerable R-7 family (Vostok/Voshkod/Soyuz) does its thing. Vernors are also probably an option now that the price went way down, or even monoprop RCS thrusters with the capsule's built-in supply.

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Yep. Drag is proportional to the square of your speed, with (I believe) some tweaking for transonic drag. If you want to look at your drag info in more detail, you can use the console (alt-12), physics > aero > aeroGUI. Drag is in newtons, as is thrust, so this can tell you what portion of your rocket is being wasted to drag.

Nothing you can do to improve the aerodynamics of a craft in situ (without mods, anyway), other than modifying your flight profile. You could try using a gentler gravity turn to get out of thick atmosphere quicker. (This is probably good practice on Laythe vs. Kerbin, since gravity losses are lower but drag is material up to higher altitudes. Also, that thing looks like it goes very, very fast. If you hit too high of a speed to low, your drag losses will be much higher. Throttling down might help.