Evrion

I've put probes on escape trajectories from the sun several times in the past. Just dump in a lot of fuel and burn! (Mostly I do this in sandbox mode). In any case, I have warped at max speed for long periods of time and not found an edge to the sun's SOI. So it appears that the solar SOI is infinite. Also: SOI tends to be at the distance where the theoretical gravitational of a body looses out to another. Ie: if you use newtonian gravitation to calculate the gravity force to all the bodies around you, then the one with the largest force will the the one whose SOI the game puts you in. or: SOI in KSP = strongest real gravitational force. Given that the game doesn't model any other stars, it makes sense that, once you go far away from everything, the largest gravitational force is always just the biggest object.

online gaming? Why are you asking about that in KSP forums? In any case, it is a good setup. Not great, but it will play most games on high settings. But to properly evaluate the build we would need: 1) which games 2) what kind of resolution is your monitor 3) what do you mean by "good"? connection speed? picture quality? ping time?

I've found that a single radial decoupler can hold onto an SRB on it's own. I used to strut them at the top, but stopped doing that so that they could be ejected with a little force rather than dropped.

Yes, escape at C if you want to go in, A if you want to go out. You will have to play with maneuver nodes to get the right place to do the burn so that your exit path matches the desired escape direction. If I were going to Eve, I would probably burn prograde about half-way between B and C.

I want to add: When you are rearranging the staging, the parts you are hovering over in the staging menu will light up green on the actual rocket. Or if you hover over the part on the actual rocket, that part will highlight in the staging list. This is massively useful as rockets get more complex and the game has no idea how it's supposed to work and you need to do a lot of rearranging. Personally, I like to have a decouple and next stage ignition on the same stage.

Because the Mun is tidally locked to Kerbin, it's rotation speed is very low, so orbital direction has very little effect on require mission dV. This is also true for other tidally locked moons. Approaching planets, I always make sure to get to the prograde side, but for tidally locked moons, I'm not so concerned. Unless I'm trying to dock with a station!

Every orbit must be co-planar with the center of mass of the object being orbited. That means if you drew the orbit on a flat piece of paper, the center of the object being orbited would not be above or below the paper, but actually on it. In the real world this is because the gravity force keeping an object in orbit comes from (well, is centered on) the center of mass. Think of a 2-D situation: Object - Circle, Orbit - line. The orbit must cross the center of the circle. It will therefore cross, or be directly on top of, every other possible orbit or diameter. This means you must cross the equator In 3-D, you can change the altitudes in crazy ways, but seen edge on, the above 2-D thing still applies.

1) Jool eats fuel for breakfast! http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Cheat_Sheet Notice the 2600 m/s just to get from intercept to orbit (though this can be done with a lot of aerobraking.) I did a Tylo Landing mission that used about 5 orange tanks of fuel to get from LKO to Tylo then back, not that I'm saying I was efficient. 2) Skippers are quite inefficient, try using something else. I like the Nuclear engines. 3) Forget the advice, just give it a shot and see! It's the Kerbal way

Kerbals wear space suits all the time, even on Kerbin. So that can't really be used as evidence either way.

LV-N engines are heavy, so the fewer the better. However, if you don't have that many, then you will have to do you transfer burn over several passes. That means, set up the node to do the full transfer, burn say 3 min. early to 3 min after the node to get 6 min of the transfer done, set up the node again for the next pass and burn more, repeat until you get the full transfer done. This is really annoying, but very fuel efficient. Personally, I did a transfer using 10 orange tanks and 20 LV-N engines with 5x750 units of mono-prop to Jool in one pass (fuel depot). This made it to Jool with 5 full orange tanks I maybe should have split it, but I'm lazy. Should give you some idea of where to start.

I agree, you can't. You have to try and leave one craft in a "stable enough" position while you work on the other. If you can't do that, you will have to use, um, I have no idea, mods?

Given the decouplers, as mentioned, it shouldn't happen. I know I have that problem when I attach a tug to a lander craft, then the tug draws fuel from the lander. But that's through a docking port. Looking at your design, I think you could actually just attach the lower orange tanks to the radial decouplers directly. Unless there is something I'm missing. This might fix the problem.

You can do it. It's hard. Essentially, Duna is a small target. Kerbin is far away, trying to actually hit that small target is really hard, and requires extremely fine tuning in a way that KSP is not really built for. Cartz seems to have a good way to go about doing it though!

http://ksp.olex.biz/ is an excellent way to find that indeed, 45 degrees is about right. It also let's you check out other planets.

If I get this right: You have a Rocket and a Plane. Rocket designed for orbital flight, and plane built for atmospheric flight. In a suborbital trajectory, you detach the rocket from the plane, then want to have both do their thing safely. First: it IS possible to switch to any craft you have from the map view by simply clicking on them, then selecting "Switch to". (The other option there, "Set as target" is also useful, but not in this case.) The rocket, when it gets to orbit, will be safe, that's the quick part. So, I would try things this way, if you can get both to an apoapsis of more than 70 km. 1) Suborbital trajectory should be relatively long, say up to 80-90 km. 2) control the rocket, once you get to apoapsis, burn so the rocket is safe. 3) switch to the plane, hopefully before the atmosphere plays havoc with it. If you can't get them both into space. I would try the same procedure, be quick with the rocket and hope you can recover from whatever KSP's aerodynamics have done with your plane once you switch back.

Sounds like what I do, EXCEPT for large plane changes. If one craft is in polar orbit and one in equatorial for example. In that case, play with the purple indicators AND the Retrograde (maybe even prograde) markers. If you pull only on the purple nodes, then the orbit will get quite a bit larger. For that reason you need to drop the orbit with the retrograde marker. Again, this is only really necessary for significant plane changes, say 15 degrees or more. edit: and they are expensive! might be better to just end the flight (from the Tracking station) and send up another rocket.

"Lagrangian points L2 through L5 exist only in rotating systems, such as in the monthly orbiting of the Moon about the Earth. At these points, the combined attraction from the two masses is equivalent to what would be exerted by a single mass at the barycenter of the system, sufficient to cause a small body to orbit with the same period." -Wikipedia With my reading of Wikipedia, I think you're right about why. This would elminate L4 and L5 as viable Lagrange points. L1, L2 and L3 should still work, just at slightly different points from "reality". However, these ones require constant monitoring and adjustments just to hold position, so are much less interesting for KSP imo. So I would say, cool idea! but KSP's physics is sufficiently wrong that adding Newtonian motion to spacecraft would be not really interesting. Essentially, the added computation in the simulation does not add enough interesting mechanics available.

If you are building the whole thing in the Vehicle assembly building, it doesn't really matter so long as KSP accepts them, they will work. If you are putting it together after launch, you MUST use docking ports of the same size.

L4 and L5 are the only stable Lagrange points. They have the nifty feature that if you wander around them a bit, they pull you back. It's not really an orbit because those points themselves move as the secondary body moves. If they worked right, then things like this could be done: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network If they work by some sort of vague simulation like you suggest than all you can do is stay there, which is not really much different from the current situation. An orbit could be done, but Lagrange "orbits" aren't the same as a regular orbit. There are even some cool things like the "Horseshoe orbit" that become possible if they are more properly simulated. I understand that it's all in terms of output. A good simulation would allow for all the fun things that can be done with Lagrange points IRL (Look them up!), and quick and dirty approach (a very Kerbal one?) would not really allow for much new and really not be worthwhile.

hmm, "reply with quote" is failing me at the moment. "First, a clarification. L3, L4, and L5 are already perfectly useable in the game as-is. Thus, any bemoaning the absence of Lagrange points concerns only L1 and L2 which, sadly, not only are the most useful ones but also the only ones that need n-body gravity in real life.? - Geschosskopf I don't think this is correct. All Lagrange points depend on n-body interactions. Lagrange points in general are points in space where it is theoretically possible to orbit a central body in exact time with a secondary body. L3, the point exactly opposite the secondary body is kinda worthless in general for spacecraft so I don't mind ignoring it. L4 and L5 are very interesting ones in that they are stable points of orbit. Or, more plainly, if you miss them by a bit, you will tend to be pulled back into them. This is why Jupiter has Trojan asteroids at it's L4 and L5 points. In KSP these points are not stable in the same way. In KSP you can orbit at those points, or ANY other point on the orbit of the secondary object so long as your orbit matches the secondary object. In KSP, if you want to use L4 or L5 of, say Kerbin around the sun, then you must exactly match Kerbin's orbit. It is actually not necessary to get the right position on the orbit, just the orbital shape right. If you miss by a little, then you will eventually drift away. In real life if you want to use L4 or L5 of the Earth, than you must get an orbit that is very close to the Earth's around the sun and be very close to L4 or L5 and you will then be captured by the Lagrange point and stay there. Kind of like being captured by planets now in KSP. This means missing by a little is okay. TLDR: Yes you can orbit at the theoretical L4 or L5, but they don't work right.

As I see your idea: 1) Keep current model when no other astronomical bodies are close enough to matter much 2) Use a numerical integration model when multiple astronomical bodies have "significant" affect. (Significant here would have to be interpreted by the programmer) I would LOVE if KSP would implement n-body physics! I REALLY want to use Lagrange points! Mostly. It would make fewer orbits stable. It would increase calculations needed with many craft in space. And I suspect that this is the reason SQUAD went with the current model; all craft no the current focus can simply be placed at the appropriate places along their very well known orbits, no real calculations needed, ever. I hope somebody can figure out a way to implement this and actually test it within the context of this game. As stupid_chris pointed out, physics is the biggest calculation in game right now (mostly part to part calculations though) so I imagine any physics added to the game would have potential issues to deal with. But, it seem like it just might work! edit: Thinking about this more, using Newtonian trajectories would increase orbital motion complexity (in a good way in my book!). This would increase the draw for the hardcore physics audience, but decrease the draw for a general audience as it would be harder to fully understand. It would also increase computational demand, even if only a little. Overall, this would decrease the total audience for the game. So I think it is unlikely that SQUAD would want to do this

You could try using multi-part ships, if you are comfortable with docking. I usually use one "interplanetary tug" in one lift to LKO, then another launch to LKO for the actual probe or lander or whatever. Dock the two. Then do the interplanetary burn with the tug, undock, do the mission.

The atomic motor fairings are rather odd in how they work and that must be taken into account when designing rockets. I usually use what I call interplanetary tugs. My design for those is to have one central orange tank with the atomic motors mounted radially around it. Then the lifting rocket is mounted under the orange tank so that no fairings are needed at all as nothing is placed directly underneath the atomic rockets. Rotating the atomic motors is also an option. The Orange "tab?" in the motor gives an indication of which direction the fairings will fire. Use "Q" and "E" to rotate the motor while you have it selected with your mouse. note: I think explosions are impact dependent, not structure dependent, so strutting won't actually help.

Right now, the game is pure sandbox. So there are no defined missions, other than what you define for yourself. Come up with your own ideas! In the future there will be a career mode which will likely be more structured.

I vote: all of them. however: 1) The ribbon is not a regulated system 2) Sometimes it's not exactly clear what counts and what doesn't 3) There is no other reward than pride So: do whatever makes you feel good. If lying outright makes you feel good, go for it. If only taking ribbons that you KNOW you've earned makes you feel good, do that. Edit: Personally I don't like lying and think the ribbon acts as a good "game time spent" measure, so I keep my reasonably up to date.