xub313

Turns out Pathfinder was a pretty good idea.

I sent probes to Moho and Eve, to orbit this time, not just fly by. Both the Moho Messenger and Eve Explorer carry magnetometers and relay dishes. They'll set up in polar orbits to survey each planet's biomes/anomalies. The Eve Explorer carries a smaller probe, the Eve Skimmer (the small grey box), that will dip into Eve's lower atmosphere with its fluid-spectro-variowhatever. The really fun stuff is behind the scenes though. I think I've figured out a pretty good way of planning missions that is efficient but also easy enough to do by hand with just a pocket calculator. I've been figuring out what inclination I should be launching into to save me some delta v on those inclination changes for Moho. Porkchop plot? I keep my kerbals are kosher. I also made a simulation for long burns so that I can have long LV-N burns and keep my spacecraft horizontal the entire burn instead of pointing it at a maneuver node marker.

You could also use a KAL-1000 to retract the antenna for a few minutes and then extend it again once the craft has landed.

I tested an experimental minishuttle. The Mk1 plane parts are difficult to bring down without overheating, especially with 1.2x reentry heat. The Condor X-1 is a barebones glider for dummy testing. Recent attempts have all burned up, I might just use the Mk2 parts instead. I also launched a direct ascent Mun landing fulfil the "return from the surface of the Mun" contract. Jeb likes BIG rockets and BIG landers! The big lander let me bring lots of cargo so I finally got to check out the EVA construction. The stamp-o-tron works well as a lift for rover construction. Here bill is building the gang a rover while Jeb holds the flashlight.

I sent a probe to fly by Moho in my career save. I just barely had enough fuel after I messed up my ejection burn. Moho is not to be underestimated. Those 4 antennas just barely give me enough signal strength on hard difficulty.

I like the Dawn ion engine. Long burn times don't bother me, I just read a book or something. I've even used them to redirect asteroids.

I've also been getting back into KSP. I even made an Excel "program" to predict rocket launches too. If you want a thorough breakdown of KSPs drag mechanics, I recommend you read this post I found the other day. I haven't used his KOS script, but his calculations are very close to the game's debug tooltips. You're right that the drag factors from the pseudo-Reynolds number and Mach number are independent. The multipliers for Re and M are defined in KSPs physics.cfg file using splines (DRAG_PSEUDOREYNOLDS and DRAG_MULTIPLIER.) These are the same for every craft, however, these are only applied after KSP calculates the drag for each part, a function of its drag cube, heading, and Mach. Mach effects each craft differently, which makes sense, a pointy craft will be less affected by Mach than a blunt one. You can see this in the splines I mentioned where tip drag is heavily emphasized past Mach 1. If you're interested, I plugged a bunch of the splines from physics.cfg into Desmos to see what they looked like. Here's a graph of the Cd multiplier indexed by Mach number.

I salute Squad and I salute the KSP community o7. I for one will probably always be here playing KSP.

I imagine that fireworks are very important in Kerbal culture. Something about rockets and explosions.

I usually give it to whomever has the least work to do on the surface. I didn't drag your little green butt all the way to the Mun just for you to sit in the cockpit eatin' snacks while Bill and bob set up a bunch of science equipment!

I'm guessing your big ol' payload on the top of the rocket, whether it's in a fairing or not, is producing a lot of drag. You'll want to put some fins at the back of the rocket to keep it stable. Don't be afraid to go a little overboard, I've even used the big FAT-455 airplane wings as fins to stabilize a very sensitive rocket.

I was only looking at the last three digits. I didn't notice they were 1km off. Good catch. I had plenty of monopropellant, I just have to dump most of it before reentry in order to keep the thing aerodynamically stable. I don't have a quicksave of that launch but I flew the mission again with the exact same craft just for you.

I was using the big-s wings originally and they provide a lot of lift, but it just wasn't enough for me. I saw the videos of your shuttle, so I I'm certain it's possible. Maybe it has more to do with my piloting skill; I couldn't land the extra 40 tons without some suicide maneuver like stalling out just before touchdown. The delta shuttle has about twice the total wing area and allows me to glide much farther than before. Also, I think the big ol' delta wings look cool.

If you upgrade the research center to level 2 in career mode then you get access to resource transfer and can right-click on the tanks to transfer fuel between them.

It's about time I took a crack at this challenge. I love building shuttles in KSP. Here's my submission for STS-1 a and b. I call it the delta shuttle. The big triangular wings are my solution to deorbiting the 40 ton probe without impacting like a meteor when the time comes for that. The only mods I have installed are Distant Object Enhancement and Navball Docking Alignment Indicator.

It has a big-S tail fin on the back.

I accidentally deleted all my programs on my TI-84 a while ago. Most of them were for calculating stuff in KSP. I've rewritten them all and then some. Now I don't even need the wiki to get all the info I need on the planets like their semi-major axis and mean anomaly. I'm a self-sufficient Kerbal player now!

Hopefully I'll be posting this in the shuttle challenge thread this weekend. I call it the delta shuttle. It needs a lot of wing area since I've got to deorbit and land a 40 ton payload as part of the challenge.

I'd probably use the nuclear or ion engines and whatever big ol booster I need to get it into orbit. Though I'd also set up a gravity assist or two just for fun.

Thanks for the answers @bewing, @Snark, and @18Watt. I figured that since the same amount of energy is expended, the heat oughta be the same, but I think my problem was assuming that the same amount would necessarily be transferred to the craft regardless of the reentry path. I guess I'm still not quite sure how reentry heat works physics-wise. I did the math and what you say about a steeper reentry angle accumulating less heat is true (assuming the heat flow rate is proportional to the product of the square root of the air density and the cube of the velocity.) You still might want to take a shallow entry if your craft is good at radiating heat since a shallower angle will result in a slower heat flow rate and allow you to radiate more of the heat away. You could probably design a reentry path that keeps the craft's heat flow close to equilibrium. I dunno how well the average KSP craft radiates heat though. That'll be a project for another time.

Also, this. Very much this. Don't make the mistake of trying to come in super-shallow; you'll fry yourself without slowing down. Can anyone explain this? The craft has to bleed off the same amount of kinetic energy so the shallower trajectory ought to be better since the craft has more time to radiate heat away. Maybe it's because parts lose heat faster in a thicker atmosphere.

I agree with OP that Pol is kinda spooky. Airless bodies, deep space, and gas giants are spooky enough on their own. The spiky terrain makes it even more unnerving. They remind me of plans to deter future mankind from tampering with our nuclear waste tens of thousands of years into the future. Some of the methods proposed involved paving over the entire area to make farming impossible and covering it with menacing spikes and thorns.

Pol is a single grain of pollen drifting through the field of flowers that is the cosmos. In a time before time it floated into the nostril of the great Space Kraken who, having a terrible pollen allergy, proceeded to sneeze "ACHOOOO!" all over the Kerbol system. The biggest of these cosmic loogies became Jool and the smaller droplets became the Kerbals.

Alright, I think I'm gonna try my hand at this challenge. It's good to know that I've still got 'till the end of the month before round 3 ends. Round 4 looks interesting too. I've made a few unmanned sample return probes before and I thought they were really fun to build and fly. The collaboration part sounds fun too.

Here's my entry for Lunex 2 first class. Hopefully that cargo elevator will be useful for the next few missions so I can reuse the same craft. This was my first time using the Breaking Ground robotic parts too. It was a lot of fun! Yes! I dunno why but I love that game to death, even if a lot of it just boils down to watching the computer roll dice. My craft is called the XMS-2, which is the same as the US minishuttle craft in Race into Space. I really liked the challenge of getting a Moon landing with it in that game.