Miller

It definitely not as easy as stock KSP, but its nothing extremely demanding.

You are totally right. I was thinking of delta-v loss in general but for some reason i labeled it all as drag losses as I was writing.

Doing some simple calculations it seems like your rocket looses about 1677 m/s delta-v to atmospheric drag, which seems alright to me. The payload is about 3.2% of the total mass as mentioned before. To put this into context, the space shuttle is somewhere between 3.1-4.3% depending on the final orbit parameters(this is counting the orbiter itself as payload). Looking at the numbers it seems to be okay but I am sure there are other factors which I have missed. In KSP the launch happens from the equator so there is a pretty big speed boost from that.

I am watching MAVEN launch live right now and I just can't help but think that they should broadcast their simulation from KSP with RSS,MF,FAR and etc.

This is one of the best looking command pods! Are you thinking of creating any other ones in the future?

I wish one day we will be able to have such terrain in KSP, but that's going to take a looong time especially that we don't even have 64 bit support.

Hah. That is why it was soo hard for me to launch them. After enabling realmasses I suddenly have 50% more delta-v. Thanks for that!

Oh didn't know about that, thanks! I guess this will make things harder?

@Diablos Thanks! Yeah I will have to dwell deeper into real rocket designs. Although it seems like my design under performs in comparison to real life counter parts.

Success! After 5 hours of testing and modifying my vessel and its launch profile I have been able to place my first small satellite in a stable orbit around real sized Kerbin! Separation from the 4th stage: Unfolding of solar panels: View of the satellite after the 4th stage of my SSLV burnt retrograde to reenter Kerbins atmosphere: Thanks to everyone who is working on Real Solar System and other realism mods. This game is soo much more fun this way!

@Dimovski Hahaha, the heading is alright . @Captain_Party What do you mean by "ST and PF"?

For the past few days I have been trying to make a vessel that is capable of positioning my small hexasat in a 400km LEO orbit. The payload is pretty small weighing just about 0.2 tons. The whole vehicle is 4 stage and it has a delta-v of around 10.2 km/s. No matter what launch profile i tried, it never reached stable orbit. Any ideas?

After uninstalling DRE the problem doesn't appear to happen anymore.

How do you do it Nathan? You have around 5 mods under you which are soo good that alot of people won't even play ksp without them.