Aegolius13

Ideas I've been able to come up with so far (not even trying to pretend they're creative): Propellers (air or water) VTOL aircraft Landing legs Collapsible craft to fit better in fairings/cargo bays Boom-mounted docking ports Cranes (electromagnet from KIS/KAS might be especially useful for this) Deployable ramps Elevators Catapults/trebuchets Custom wheels Kinetic hoppers for very low-gravity worlds Self-righting probes, rovers, etc Gadgets to deploy satellites (a la Starlink) or otherwise push ships apart Multi-hinged solar panels for better solar tracking

You could also stick a precooler in front of each of the engines (though this would lengthen your ship a bit). They're my go-to intake when I don't have a 1.25m front node available for a shock cone.

I've done a Mainsail in the middle, and a ring of Reliants/Kodiaks around the outside. Not as powerful as using Vectors, but much much cheaper. But that's usually with side boosters, so could end up underpowered on a single-stack design.

What was the delta-v figure for the burn? Moho is really, really sensitive if you have a less-than perfect approach. You want to make sure you're as close to tangent as possible with Moho's orbit, and you'll likely need to address the plane change issue far enough out that you don't have a huge normal/antinormal burn towards the end. If you decide to do a bunch of the capture burn prior to hitting Moho's SOI, you can always take that concept one step further and use ion engines. They're really easy to power with solar that close to the sun, and the very long burn times don't matter which when in deep space. There's also an alternative method that involves leaving for Moho when Kerbin is at its ascending or descending node, so that you can match planes as you leave. Personally I like it a lot better, and it seems to be less prone to unexpectedly-huge capture maneuvers.

Yep, this is called a "cosine loss." The amount of wasted thrust is proportional to the cosine of the inclination (0% wasted if the engine is pointing exactly where you want to go, 100% wasted at 90% inclination). The effect on delta-v would be the same, since cosine losses decrease the amount of usable thrust generated per unit of fuel consumed. It's akin to lowering the ISP of your thrusters. The above should hold true for one-direction thrusters or regular engines. I've never really delved into it with the multi-direction thruster blocks, but I think it would work the same way, since using the additional thrust directions (which are pointed even more in the wrong direction) would not be expected to improve efficiency. I'm not a MechJeb user, but I believe it provides some data on cosine losses. Don't know if this includes info from RCS, though. (My very first post on this forum was on the same topic, so you're in good company!)

I haven't had a chance to watch the full webcast yet, but was there any info on the ascent engine for the human version? From the rendering it looks like it could be another BE-7, but hard to say. Seems a little surprising they would not go with hypergolics for that one, but obviously they feel pretty comfortable with hyrdolox at this point.

Hoping the ground experiments will be something more than "click, wait, get science points," like the MPL tends to be. But also hoping they're not too grindy, like the "take readings at 5 points" contracts. I guess I don't have a good idea about make ground science entertaining within the constraints of the base game mechanics, but hoping they've figured it out. The robotic parts alone look like they're probably worth the cost, though, so anything else is gravy.

Question 1 - as @laie says, the 1450 m/s is for taking off, not landing. When you're landing, drag works in your favor, so drag "losses" reduce your requirement rather than add to it, meaning the landing requiremnet should be a lot lower on a planet with an atmosphere. By analogy, the map says it takes 3,400 m/s to take off from Kerbin, but you can land with nothing more than an initial deorbit burn. Sounds like you should be more than fine with your current setup. Question 2 - not really, since it's going to depend on the aerodynamic properties of each particular craft. But at least in my experience, as long as you'd got a somewhat-draggy shape, and a chute or two, the delta-v requirement to land is always going to be pretty low. The concern is probably more like "terminal velocity is 50 m/s higher if I skimp out on chutes, so I'll need to add 50 m/s to the landing burn" rather than "I'm going to have the burn the engines most of the way down to to have a chance."

Wait a minute, you can use trim on engine gimbal to correct for off-centered thrust? Never knew that...

This page shows the equation to get from delta-v required (determined per above) to burn time, using a rearrangement of the Rocket Equation: http://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Space/Rocket_Equations.htm But note that that's idealized. Real-life performance will be slightly worse, mainly because you can't put all of the required impulse down a right at the maneuver node, so some of your potential delta-v will be wasted as cosine losses.

More LF-only tanks. or a stock fuel-switch option. Can we please, please stop having to scavenge airplane parts for nuclear spacecraft?

Has there been any public information about the ultimate cost allocation for the failed* Zuma spy satellite? I.e., whether Northrop and/or their insurers have to return some of the funds or make another one at their cost? All I could find was some early coverage predicting the U.S. government would just eat the cost, which seems troubling. *Queue the conspiracy theories that it's working fine, and Northrop agreed to take a bunch of verbal abuse in exchange for all that money.

Hi, and welcome aboard! First of all, that's a really nice build you've got going. Looks like you've already mastered a lot of the skills needed for an Eve mission. As far as flipping, I've had this problem too. I found that just putting a few light fins (like the smallest triangular wing segment) did the job. If you haven't already, you could try turning the Vector's gimbal range down. It may be overcorrecting and contributing to instability. The other thing that would help (for both stability and range) would be to get a nosecone on the top. You might be able to go that, and still have an anchor point for your upper heat shield, by using a fairing with attachment nodes. But that would add weight, which doesn't help either. As far as getting to orbit, I think you may just not have a big enough rocket for your payload. Maybe try using six instead of four radial boosters - I did that once, with one pair of Vectors and two pairs of Darts, and it worked pretty well. I also imagine that bulge in the middle of your core stage is causing a lot of drag. This is an age-old problem since building taller makes the thing harder to reenter and land with. But you might be able to move some of that fuel to the radial boosters, by making their stacks a little higher.

Agreed, I would suggest adding a lot more wing (in addition to @swjr-swis''s other good suggestions). You may have tried to compensate for low wing area by adding more raw power in the form of Rapiers. This puts a lot of mass at the back, exacerbating the lawn-dart issue others have described. But it also hurts your fuel efficiency, and hence your effective range and payload. Are you planning on docking this plane with anything (I can't always tell if there's an inline docking port). If not, I'd strongly consider getting rid of all monopropellant stuff. If want/need RCS for attitude control, the Vernors you have are probably the simpler option. Personally I just abuse reaction wheels, though.

Hello, and welcome aboard! You'll get the most/best responses to a question seeking gameplay advice if you post it in the "Gameplay Questions and Tutorials" section. The "Suggestions" section is more about suggestions of changes people would like to see to the game itself. A mod should be able to help you move this thread to get the right eyeballs on it. From looking at the screenshot I'm not really able to tell what each of the component segments is tasked with doing what, so in that way it's a little hard to tell if the ship has what it takes. From your description it sounds like you're not planning on landing on any of the moons; is that correct? (That said, Pol and Bop are so low-gravity that it's easy and cheap to land on them if you're going there anyway.). Are you planning to visit all of the moons? It might also be helpful if you could post delta-v stats from the various components. All that said, some general thoughts: -Your engine selection looks pretty good - Poodles and Terriers are good for this kind of role, and staging away the side pods with the Terriers is a smart move. But you possibly may have more engine/TWR at some points than you need to maneuver in deep space. In particular, it looks like you have a Poodle section on each of the two pieces, but will only be using one at a time. You could probably save some weight/delta-v by designing so that you only have one. Put another way, if the "first" Poodle has enough thrust to move the entire stack, the "second" Poodle, which will be moving less weight, probably has more than enough thrust for its job, unless you're using it to land on a big moon or something. -The other major option for engines is NERVs. They're pretty popular for Jool missions, and if you're not planning to land on any big bodies, their low TWR is not much of a drawback. But they're certainly not necessary. -Long rockets with floppy parts in the middle (like docking ports) can tend to get wobbly when under thrust. If you've test-fired this thing and it's not currently a problem, you should be good to go. Struts can help but they will go away if you separate and re-dock. Autostruts can help (without that problem) if you're fine with using them. -Solar panels are quite weak at producing electricity as far out as Jool. It does not look like you have any electricity-hogging applications, but, you you're likely fine there, but something worth keeping in mind.

Of course, you CAN get to a destination faster than a Hohmann transfer, at the cost of higher delta-v, consumption, by doing a bigger injection burn, and then a bigger braking/insertion burn at the end. I vaguely remember seeing a video from someone (maybe Scott Manley) who got to the Mun in a few minutes of in-game time by turning on infinite fuel, burning prograde halfway there, and burning retrograde for the second half to slow down.

That's a big lander.

Ahhhh, that makes much more sense. I was a little confused when they were talking about a higher altitude... for a GTO satellite.

I would only use this in good conscience if it was incorporated into some kind of more robust career mode, where you have to go through the steps of creating a Munbase. That seems unlikely to happen, and I'm not sure how well it would even work with KSP's gameplay. All that said, I don't really mind if it's available in the game; I just wouldn't use it.

At least on paper, these sound like good changes. I very much appreciate the (newfound?) attention to part balance -- especially the idea that parts should not be globally over- or underpowered, and should all have a niche. But please, for the love of the Kraken, do something to make the Puff usable. I have no idea how, without introducing new game mechanics that favor monoprop, but IMO it's currently the biggest dead weight by far.

1.8 will be timed to coincide with the first SLS launch. So let's hope 1.7 is good.

If you're rocket's not flipping or blowing up, you probably don't need to throttle down at all. Drag losses should also be pretty minimal unless you're flying a brick. This thread is really informative:

There's nothing wrong with launching into a suborbital trajectory. Due to the laws of orbital mechanics, it is IMPOSSIBLE to get into orbit without doing some portion of your burn in space. In rare cases, you can get there with one continuous burn, but to do so would require a very specific launch profile and TWR curve over the course of your ascent. It's much more common to do a big initial burn to get into the suborbital trajectory, cut off the engines, and then do a circularization burn at apoapsis. Given that, your second option (perigee of 45km) seems like it's on the right track, though you could cut off sooner to avoid the apo overshoot. I often end up with a substantially lower (or even negative) periapsis at the end of my initial burn. One rough metric I like to use -- how much delta-v is required for the circulation burn? If it's like 1,000 m/s or something, yeah, the profile probably needs work. But if it's a hundred or two, you're likely in pretty good shape.

Whooooooaaaaaaa, living on a prayer...

If you want to play it safe, you can enclose everything above the heat shield (or just the low temp tolerant stuff) in a fairing or service bay. However, that can lead to flipping if there's not enough drag at the back.