silent_prtoagonist

1. Fuel consumption and thrust both scale linearly with the throttle, so efficiency is constant at all throttle settings. 2. Both Kerbin and Mun are approx. 1/4 the size of Earth and Moon, respectively, and their mass has been chosen so that they have the same surface gravities as their real-world counterparts. (Note that this means that they\'re ridiculously dense, somewhere between solid plutonium and a stellar core O_o) The Kerbin-Mun distance is also roughly to scale. Low Kerbin Orbital speed is about 2,350 m/s, while Low Earth Orbital speed is about 7,800 m/s 3. This is a known bug. Hopefully will be fixed with the upcoming rework of the staging system (or not, we\'ll see). 4. See 3 5. Time acceleration will make any physical simulation less stable/accurate. Nature of the beast. 6. There\'s a bug where the launch pad can be somewhat 'sticky,' i.e. it takes a thrust/weight ratio > 1 to lift off. Once you\'re airborn, though, performance should be much more consistent. (try using landing legs or stack decouplers to 'boost' yourself off the pad briefly with the engines going full bore) 7. NovaSilisko\'s mods (especially the 'Silisko Edition') tend to be fairly realistic, and a bit tougher to use, performance wise, than the stock parts. There are several other realistic packs around, but those are a good start.

Hmm that\'s most unfortunate...the alt to copy is one of the most useful features...

Windows 8 8) (yes, the new 'start menu' does give me nightmares...)

It\'s only left alt that does this, if by chance you were only trying right

Specific Impulse (effective exhaust velocity) and delta V for each stage? Specifit impulse is unfortunately a little difficult to calculate because of the weird way KSP handles fuel, but it\'s pretty straight forward. Specific Impulse is (if I\'ve got the maths right): Isp = fsT/fm = (T/c) / ((m_tf-m_te)/tc) where: Isp = specific impulse (m/s) fsT = fuel specific impulse (kN*s/fuel unit) = T/c fm = fuel mass (mt/fuel unit) = (m_tf-m_te)/tc T = thrust (kN) c = engine fuel consumption rate (fuel units/s) m_tf = tank mass, full (mt) m_te = tank mass, empty (mt) tc = tank fuel capacity (fuel units) Because different tanks and engines would have different parameters, you\'d have to calculate fsT and fm individually for each tank/engine, and then average them before plugging them into the formula. delta V is: dV = Isp*ln(m_0/m_1) where: dV = delta V (m/s) Isp = specific impulse or effective exhaust velocity (m/s) m_0 = full mass of entire craft (full mass of entire stage plus higher stages) m_1 = empty mass of entire craft (empty mass of entire stage plus full mass of higher stages)

A similar challenge showed up a while ago. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=6778 I managed 4 hours round trip, and boolybooly did it in an amazing 2:39:01! Sadly his pics didn\'t survive the server move, it seems, but if I recall his craft was remarkably small. Turns out the biggest challenge is hitting Mun exactly on your way out, if you miss be even a bit you end up spending hours putzing around in Munar orbit before you can land.

Note that, as on the actual Moon, distances can be quite deceptive. Don\'t be sure about the size of the crater from the pictures.

That\'s not generally how interplanetary spaceflight works. You don\'t wait for closest approach and then burn straight for Mars. That kind of trajectory is impossible without unrealistic engines (the kind that burn pixie dust and break thermodynamics into a million pieces), and even if you did have such engines it\'d be very inefficient. Instead you use a hohmann transfer orbit. This is an elliptical solar orbit that leaves Earth on one side of the Sun and meets Mars (or whatever your objective is) on the other. These orbits are very slow, since you have to travel all the way around the Sun, but they\'re generally the most practical trajectory to use. In real life an Earth-Mars hohmann transfer takes about nine months, although the trip time can be shortened by burning a bit more fuel, but using the same basic orbit. In practice a trip form Kerbin to the next planet out would probably take about 100 Earth-days real time, at absolute speeds in the ballpark of 10-15 km/s. In my experience at least those speeds aren\'t enough to anger the kraken. Nobody said interplanetary travel was going to be quick, that\'s in large part what makes it so difficult, but the answer for KSP is higher time acceleration (or better yet, the click-to-skip system that\'s been mentioned), not higher speeds. Indeed. I was just using solar escape velocity as a worst-case example. Although it\'s not much overkill. The difference between a munar transfer orbit and Kerbin escape velocity is only a couple hundred m/s. In fact if I\'m not mistaken the Apollo missions actually achieved Earth escape velocity on their way to the Moon, in the interest of getting there in three days instead of the five that a true hohmann transfer would take.

I wondered if posting that shot would give someone enough info to narrow down the location; glad I was right. Math is awesome

I\'m not sure why people keep saying that the space kraken is a problem for interplanetary travel. The kraken only comes into play at speeds much higher than what you\'d experience on interplanetary trips. Currently reaching solar escape velocity is quite easy, and once you\'ve done that you can obviously make it to any superior planet. Inferior planets might take be a bit more of a problem, if there was one very very close to kerbol you might reach an absolute speed high enough to anger the kraken near perihelion, but that\'s an extreme case.

Apparently not, I was able to drive a cart right through it--which turned out to be rather convenient for determining it\'s exact coordinates. It also seems to be hovering a bit above the ground. I chose to attribute this the the mystical nature of the artifact...

Huzzah! Finally found it! I finally got so frustrated with having to launch a new lander for every crater, or trekking rovers between them, that I made a huge 13.5 tank lander that could land at several craters in one go. Turns out to be a pretty fun way to get around, nothing like catching a ride on a balistic ICBM to get to work in the morning . As a side note, Mech-Jeb/AR202\'s landing autopilot can be frighteningly accurate. I set it to drop the second lander on the first\'s coordinates, and then almost aborted the landing because I thought they were going to hit. I think if I hadn\'t rotated a bit the second lander would have stepped on the first\'s foot Now to begin construction of a base to study why giant monkey aliens left a monument on Mun, and determine the danger of a possible alien invasion of Kerbin to steel our bananas...

So hollered!

Haha I didn\'t think of that, thanks

So I was bored this morning... All stock parts. It\'s actually quite flyable, might even be landable if you\'re patient enough. Now I\'m wondering if I could make a version that can make orbit, maybe play a little rendezvous basketball...

Periselene (or perilune) is just periapsis with respect to the moon, as opposed to perigee for earth or perihelion for the sun, etc. It\'s kind of an archaic terminology that seems to be going out of style, somewhat, but I like to use them sometimes As for how I did the double free return, I think I just loaded up IMFD (a navigation suite for Orbiter if you\'re not familiar with it) and played around with the variables until I got something that worked. I never tried an Earth-Mars free return, but I imagine I\'d use the same method. I suppose I could figure out the maths to do it right, but so far I haven\'t felt motivated to do that much work EDIT: Transx is another navigation suite for Orbiter. Unfortunately it wont work outside of Orbiter, but there are similar programs that are stand-alone, although I don\'t have much experience with them.

It was intentional, but this was a couple of years ago so I don\'t remember many details. I do seem to recall though that the orbit had a very high perigee, a couple thousand km I think, and periselene was pretty high too, neither of which would be optimal for a transfer shuttle. And of course your crew module/whatever still has to make up all the delta V to get to the moon, it just gets to travel along docked to a big station instead of by itself. Basically all this would do is give you a big hotel to stay in on the trip there and back, which wouldn\'t be a huge advantage for the couple of days it takes to get to the moon, but might be if you could set up a similar orbit between two planets. (I remember a discussion somewhere about the possibility of doing this between Earth and Mars)

I remember the feeling of my first Mun landing. I\'ve done dozens in Orbiter but never completely manual and with actual terrain to land on. You\'re right, there\'s nothing quite like that feeling Btw, did you know there\'s a build-in screenshot feature in KSP? Default key is F1. Might save you some trouble in the future

I\'m not sure this is completely impossible, I know in Orbiter I managed once to do a double free return, but it fell apart after that. I think in theory it\'s possible, but it would be very unstable. But with all the simplifications is KSP it might be possible to cheat your orbit to exactly the right values and keep it there (assuming it\'s still possible with KSP\'s patched conic approximation, which I think it would be) I may load up good ol\' Transx and play around with this for a while...

Of course this is your mod and you can do make it however you like, but just to put things into perspective: According to http://www.russianspaceweb.com/tks.html TKS had a launch mass of 21,620 kg, and a maximum diameter of 4.15 m. I believe your version has a max diameter of 1.5 m, so it\'s scaled down by a factor of 2.77. Assuming the same density, a scaled-down TKS should have a mass, then, of 21,620kg/(2.77)^3=1,017 kg. But, assuming the 1 KSP mass unit=1 metric tonne convention, your version masses at least ten times this... Again I\'m certainly not demanding that you change anything, it\'s your project. (Plus, if I really wanted to, I could just go through and edit the .cfgs for my own use.) Just food for thought

Seconded, these parts are kind of ridiculously dense. Although it\'s an interesting challenge to get these parts into orbit with reasonably sized rockets, they tend not to play well with others when I try to mix and match with other addons (or even stock parts).

Agreed, Nova\'s addons are always top-notch, you can tell how much work he puts into them. :cheers:

Bored airbase personnel+a few gallons of paint=best troll ever?

Could you do this by just spawning a particle with zero velocity wrt the part and letting it drift with the air stream, like the exhaust contrails?

Fair enough. After docking and a solar system, I think some TLC for parts and the staging system, including tweaking, is the development I\'m most hoping for/looking forward to.