Hannu

We have studied only the surface of the Moon with such an accuracy that we can say that it is sterile. Except bacteria from Earth. Apollo 12 crew landed near Surveyor 3 probe, which had been several years on Moon. They took some parts to investigation and found bacteria which had survived years in vacuum exposed to extreme temperature variations and high radiation levels. Of course they can not reproduce or spread in such conditions but they can stay alive. It will be also very interesting to get soil sample from Mars at depth of couple of meters.

Eeloo is boring small sphere but it is interesting challenge to make an Apollo-style mission to there and back with minimum energy (and life support and triple room per kerbal). - - - Updated - - - If you make a rocket which seems a real rocket (a long tube with conical nose and four AV-R8 fins at tail) and fly like real rockets fly (nose pointed to direction they fly) you should not have any problems.

Well. It is difficult to say anything about aliens who can live years in space without metabolism just weared to spacesuit. There is room for different rolegames, future ideas and mods. I think that there can be simple life in Laythe and try not explain it too much with our natural laws. There are clearly different elements and interactions in KSP world as in our world. KSP system would be impossible with our physics. - - - Updated - - - Or is it? We do not know anything sure about it. It may also be that life is extremely resilient phenomena and it can arise or spread to any suitable planet. Studies of exoplanets show that there are billions of such planets in our Galaxy. It seems also that life formed (or came) to earth very soon after conditions become suitable after crust solidification and it have survived in every cosmic catastrophes. It may not be very improbable thing. Catastrophes that you mentioned are extremely rare even in cosmic scale. But I agree that in any case it is very amazing that this kind of chemical phenomenon can exist in our universe. It will be very interesting time when astronomers get possibility make spectroscopic observations of exoplanets. They can detect oxygen, methane or other unstable gases which may be biological origin. Or even see glow of sodium gas from aliens' street lighting.

Do you have some mod or separate software to calculate spiral trajectories? KSP's instantaneous maneuver node model does not work if burn lasts more than couple of tens of degrees around planet. I made once a little help software to integrate long burn trajectories but it was little annoying to daily use and I use again high parking orbits and about 3 m/s acceleration to avoid maneuver errors.

Eve seems to be harder than before. Drag is lower but it is much harder to get enough thrust. My old 9 km/s ships are totally useless. It seems that current atmospheric model extrapolates decreasing of thrust to higher pressure levels than on Kerbin sea level. Some engines have no thrust at all and even old Eve workhorse Aerospike has been severely nerfed and totally useless now. I have to try at highest peaks over 6000 m altitude.

Do you mean manned return trip? I have made it only to Ike with version 1.0 or 1.0.2. I have not sent probes to Dres and Eeloo. I unlocked just tech tree and will next try manned return trip to Eve. I have made it many times through souposphere and have to test what it needs now.

This is good advice if somebody wants to practice rescue operations in Dres.

Of course that is other way of easy thinking. If you do it right it is also optimal way in many Dres launch windows but as I said it is practically quite difficult to do more optimal than ballistic transfer because every burn effects to each others and errors will accumulate.

You can make a transfer to Dres with two reasonable ways. One is ballistic transfer which is one elliptical trajectory which starts from Kerbin and ends to Dres. Other is three burn transfer. You boost the ship first to elliptic orbit in Kerbin's orbital plane. When you arrive to node line you make inclination correction burn to Dres's orbital plane. At arrival you make a normal braking burn. It depends of launch window which method needs less dv between Kerbin and Dres. However, the ballistic transfer is much more easy to do with KSP's defective trajectory planning tools and I recommend that for beginners. You need proper tools to calculate orbits and burns. Alexmoon's launch window planner is a good one. It takes inclinations and eccentricities into account and it can calculate ballistic and three burn trajectories. I hope you find out that it is fun to plan difficult trajectories to inclined targets.

It seems that your booster is inadequate. You should use 2 stage booster. Interplanetary ship have unnecessarily many engines. LV-Ns are heavy. TWR of about 0.3 is enough to interplanetary burns. It depends on initial orbit and dv, but if you use 250 km orbit and burn to Duna even 0.15-0.2 may be enough. Of course if you transport massive landers, stations or fuel/ore tanks with your interplanetary ship you may want to more force to avoid annoyingly long maneuvers. You should really get some engineering mod for interplanetary trips. It is not fun (IMO) to make them with eyeballs. LV-Ns are like any engines except they does not consume oxidizer (you should take it away from tanks (except what your lander needs)) and they produce heat. Heat should not be problem in your design if you use normal transfer orbits (about 1000 m/s burns). Nerfing of LV-Ns encourage to use local resources. There are plenty of ore in Ike. I sent a refinery ship there before manned operations. Now I can get return fuel from Duna system. Of course you can do an Apollo-like mission with one landing without resource utilization, but with local resources you can stay months and land to every biome on Ike and Duna.

I have rescued 8 kerbals. 4 pilots, 3 scientists and 1 engineer. 3 men and 5 women.

Kerbals make quite spectacular stunts. Or maybe it was top secret military spacecraft and stunt trick was just an official explanation.

Easiest way to find directions is to make burn so that ship escapes to Kerbin's orbital direction. Put maneuver node so that you just escape. It should be about 900 m/s from low orbit. Then adjust time so that interplanetary apoapsis is as high as possible (avoid moons). Apoapsis is typically about halfway between Kerbin and Duna. Execute the burn and wait until you escape from Kerbin's SOI. Then do the science stuff. After that create a maneuver node with about 200 m/s retrograde dv. Adjust dv so that you get an an encounter after couple of hours. Execute burn, dodge attacking Mün, adjust periapsis and land back to planet. That strange 200 m/s is error from patched conic gravity model of KSP. Escape velocity of Kerbin at the edge of SOI should be about that but game does not take Kerbin's gravity into account at large distances. So you get freely such an energy every time you leave the planet.

Thanks for this very helpful mod, but it have one problem. Alexmoon's calculator shows an angle from burn to Kerbin's orbital prograde direction. Is it possible to get that value in this mod? It is easiest way to get inclined parking orbit with correct LAN (by using information from MechJeb2). It saves typically some tens of meters per second and in best situations (large burn to high inclination) much more. And it is lot more fun to use more complicated and optimal trajectories. It would also be nice to get prograde dv value for such a burn even it is easy to calculate with calculator.

I make complicated projects. I send a station, several landers, tug ships and interplanetary crew ships on Jool's orbit and make expeditions to all moons and then collect thousands on units of science in one return trip. I think that they are larger projects than single missions. Well. I think that astronaut who does not fear when he fly at 6600 m/s in atmosphere and heat shield explodes can not qualify astronaut training even in KSC. Probably such a people eliminate themselves at about 12 years old because they do not feel fear when they approach tight curve at 100 km/h with tuned moped.

1000 kg fuel tank has diameter of 1.25 m and height of about 1 m. Volume of such tank is 1200 l but volume of liquids is only 200 l (110 l oxidizer and 90 l fuel). Real tanks have thermal insulation, elliptical ends and mechanical structures which takes volume but ratio is very much larger. Liters and densities are somewhat arbitrary.

NASA (taxpayers in USA) pays the bill and SpaceX and other contractors develop and make hardware. NASA gets honor like in Apollo project, but most of Apollo hardware came also from private companies. Or maybe China will do it first with same way, state pays and companies make stuff. I do not believe manned Mars mission before political situation changes and leaders of superstates begin to compete again with their space achievements. Significant commercial utilization of resources in farther space than geosynchronous orbit take probably several generations (50-100 years) and it will be asteroid mining and not exploration of planets. It is also very difficult project to companies which live in quarter year time scale. Nobody invest money to project who maybe gives revenue after 50 years in spite of that revenue would revolutionize the most part of world's industry.

It seems that there are again realism guys vs. gameplay guys. I think that satellite contracts are some kind of communications, remote sensing or military satellites like in our world. Those who pays satellite launches want to use them years. Also NASA would not been happy, if it had been bought Cassini from some company which would have taken it back 10 seconds after Saturn orbit insertion. But gameplay is also good aspect. You get a reward when you plan clever trajectory and fulfill several contracts with one satellite instead of grinding every satellites one at time. Current system gives both sides an opportunity to play with their style.

They do not have to fall to sun. It is enough that you decelerate orbital velocity to near zero and then accelerate again. Kerbin's orbital velocity is about 9000 m/s. It is possible but payment is far too low compared to costs. Is there some reason why tourist contracts are so low paid compared to satellites? Small satellite on Kerbin's orbit gives typically about 100000 money and it takes less than 10000 to build it. Tourists want to orbital and suborbital flights here and there and pay about as much. However, a manned craft with ability to return costs many times more than a small satellite. I have not made any tourist missions yet.

If you feel that it is wrong you can just roleplay. I do so. I leave business satellites on their orbits and mark them as debris. Sometimes I use paid stations, if they are suitable in my needs. This is computer game and not serious business. In my opinion SQUAD should concentrate to other things than disable every way to abuse game mechanics. There are more severe bugs and problems in physics and game mechanics. But I suggest that satellite contracts should give some "black box" with size, mass and strength. Player would get money when that box is separated from player's craft on correct orbit.

I agree that it is one possibility but not perfect for all. Some people want to build only planes and others want to build rockets. For example I would lose interest in SSTO -phase. I like to do something like mankind's current and near future space exploration. Plan missions with very tight dv budgets and build huge staged rockets to lift manned and unmanned probes to destinations. Piloting is not so fun. More piloting intensive SSTO phase would be too routine business after building of working plane. And somebody else thinks visa versa. Larger problem is SQUADs tendency to make physical things too easy. Current dv to orbit is too low relative to ISPs of engines because it does not need real staging. Deadly re-entry effects are ridiculously weak. Re-entry should be hard and dangerous thing which needs planning and compromises. It is OK, if they retain possibility to change things through modding or editing files. It seems that SQUAD have intended their game to versatile audience through relatively free modding of everything. In that sense I would say, that they should not lock physical parameters from modders and maybe they can also give straight control to parameters through debug menu. At least craft exchange and competition should not prevent that. It is so easy to use default values or decide together other parameters. - - - Updated - - - I am not yet so far in my new game. 1.25 - 1.4. Almost immediately after liftoff. I have never tried to build spaceplanes. http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/ However, I did not understood what is link between your questions and the topic of this discussion.

I tried the lab yesterday and got limited amount of science. It seemed to about double the science points. Or can I use same samples again? This kind of slow action would work better if time were a real resource in the game. In my opinion it would be very interesting to have month or year long experiments. But there should be maintenance costs of everything so that you would have to calculate if something is productive or not. There are some mods which give such an elements. Kerbal Construction time, life support mods etc. I combine it with some roleplay, for example crew circulation. But there could be more time dependent costs in game. I suggest that wearing, maintenance work, tools, spare parts, expendable chemicals, and everything would be modeled by one maintenance resource. Every part would have some amount of it and it would be consumed during time. Activities would increase consumption significantly, because it should be possible to make probes with age of several decades (Outer Planets Mod). If level went too low (for example 30-50 %) the part would start to lose its performance (thrust, resource production/conversion, strength, etc.) and eventually break. You could get maintenance stuff tanks from KSC and use engineers to maintain ships. For example, a service ship with an engineer and maintenance resource tank could dock to the station and move maintenance stuff from the service ship to station parts. Of course the maintenance resource would be heavy and expensive. Only engineer astronauts could do maintenance and more experienced ones would give a resource bonus. Engineer on board could also decrease the consumption of maintenance stuff in every part of the ship. That would be relatively easy to implement to game and manage by players. It could very well be a mod like life support mods.

Why it is so difficult to make an agreement that craft exchangers use default values? Why you think that your special needs are much more valuable than others? I am sure that there are very small number of people who cheats in challenges compared to people who want to adjust physics. For example, it is probably impossible to combine traditional staged rockets and SSTO spaceplanes into the same game so that both are well balanced. SSTOs are much more advanced technology. In real world nobody will use staged rockets in space exploration after SSTO plane is developed. They are as impossible to "balance" than horse riding and flying by a jet airliner. Why it is bad thing that SSTO guys could adjust atmosphere to make possible what they want and rocket guys can get their challenge by using such a settings that SSTOs are impossible? At least there could be couple of options for different game styles (for example for SSTO planes and for traditional rockets).