MBobrik

Set the planet as your target and then even when you have no encounter you will see whether the planet will be ahead or before you, above or bellow you at the point of closest approach. And then just fiddle with your velocity and direction and see how the markers move and you will soon discover that it is not very difficult to move them towards each other and when they are all close enough, you will get an encounter. Then you can fiddle with them some more to lower your periapsis. I usually get it down to a few dozen kilometers and then I adjust it just after entering the SOI.

Maybe this example will help you, my newest and rather smallish ship ( with a similar goal in mind to HoY's craft ) and stage delta-vs as computed by the engineer redux. Note that its upper stage is actually very overpowered so it can actually fly as far as to Gilly. . . I built it by building the upper stage, then adding the smallest tank and engine combination that gives me T/W around 2 and decent stage delta-v. Of course it was not enough, so I added two asparagus side tanks with their own aerospikes. Still not enough, so I added 2 x side tank w/o engine because I had already enough thrust. Still not enough, so I made the throwaway tanks 1.25 x bigger and this was enough.

actually, there is not much more to it than the equation, computed iteratively for each stage. That is basically what the engineer redux does for you. It actually computes little more, like T/W but that is even simpler.

. but then you are carrying useless weight. if you run the whole time at less than 1/3 throttle you could use only one third of the engines making your ship lighter and thus even less in need of big thrust, so at the end of the day you will end up with something much smaller, just as HoY has shown.

from what I see too much thrust - you are wasting your fuel to air drag.

Actually, a thick atmosphere would stop most of the radiation before reaching surface. Magnetic field or not. It would give, however, the moon the most spectacular and permanent aurorae ever. If it has got oxygen - nitrogen atmosphere, there would be a perpetual haze of nitrogen oxides high up created by the impacting radiation, which would produce a nice greenhouse effect keeping the moon much warmer than it would be w/o it and helping it to sustain liquid water.

Thank you, but I don't need that anymore. the new hovercraft built according to korda's suggestion works reasonably well, and I've already said that I don't want to go the clipping route. ( a rocket with a basket full of eggs on top looks kinda more cool )

I believe he said the video was sped up 16 so, the framerate was most probably not tolerable at all.

. No, it was just my first idea about how to get it on top of a rocket. Building a tall ramp and climbing with it on top of a short and thick rocket is of course another possibility. Or using airship and winch mods. However, adding decouplers inside through part clipping, that feels kinda unfair.

. what mod are you using ?

omg thats no liftoff that is kaboom in slow motion

Thank you, I built a variation of your design, and it seem to be working as advertised. For the first time I was able to hover stably over the ground at ~0.2m/s^2. Angling significantly the jets and putting all RCS around center of mass seems to be the key to it.

Predictions for the future ? All western countries will get bankrupt in a few years. After collapse of virtually economical and political structures in the west, fascism, or more exactly the most recent mutation under another, vaguely positive name will rise again. After a few short years more, world war 3 ensues, and all that will be left from this failed shot at civilization will be some radioactive ruins and a few small tribes of survivors in remote areas trying to survive in the wrecked climate we are creating. Our future is a man-made population bottleneck of the Toba scale if not worse.

shouldn't this thread go to the science labs section ?

Did you do aerobraking ? saves a lot of fuel...

. I know how it works in real word, I just didn't realize you meant the real Harrier, my first thought was that it is something in KSP.

. Sideways stability is not the issue. The thing is so stable that it takes actually some effort to make it fly sideways. My problem is balancing the thrust so that it hovers. It either flies up fast, or down fast. Striking the balance and staying at 0 vertical velocity is nigh impossible because of the throttle lag of the engines.

.what do you mean by "ducts air" ? does it steer by opening and closing the intakes or something like that ? how does it work ?

I want to get it to Minmus. And, as you see, it can not be connected to anything else, so my idea was to pick it up from the ground and place it into that basket and then fly it to Minmus.

Ive built a test rig myself, bud it is atrociously difficult to handle and it eats RCS fuel like crazy even though it hovers on jets... . . Does someone know how to build something better/ more stable, that can be used to pick up things off the ground, carry them high up, and place them w/o breaking them ? . Or, perhaps, any idea how to place this thing . . on top of that . . or more general, how to get it to Minmus ?

there are plenty of tutorials on the internets. just google kerbal space program tutorial getting to orbit or something like that. . there are loads of tutorials on the youtube like here

Question. What are the six unconnected mainsails good for ?

Test it on Kerbin. My rule of thumb : when your lander hits the ground at <3.5 m/s then you can land on Duna at < 12 m/s. To prevent ripping apart, add one or two drogues. they fully open higher, so when your main chutes open. you will have much less speed.

almost zero velocity and low gravity. Press X start turning and pray you end up thrusting upwards before you hit the ground.

Duna. With an over-engineered rocket so huge that I entered the atmosphere with an almost full big orange tank attached to a tiny rover... which flipped over at the first attempt to drive it...