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Ok I got the Dev MechJeb 2....when I get the "non Dev" build, PVG runs perfectly, but I do a little better with my classic ascent program...minus 100 to 200 DV !

Y2, D187 to D213 - First crew at Minmus base Y2, D187 - After studying potential production supply chains, it was decided that the Midlands had more potential in the short-medium term. It had Minerals which could be converted into Fertilizer (more efficient than trying to make Supplies directly from Substrate and Water). Minerals, Metallic Ore, and Substrate could be refined, then combined into Material Kits, which are used to fill inflatable modules with equipment. Material Kits are also one component of Machinery (needed to keep resource converters running) and eventually being able to build and launch vessels from the shallow gravity well of Minmus instead of Kerbin. (The other component being Specialized Parts, but the resources for those were in another biome.) Castor Base had enough propellant for a short hop to a higher elevation, and so it was relocated near the edge of a plateau overlooking the Lesser Flats. Y2, D192 - A Red Dwarf 2-4L (which hasn't been launched in almost a year) launched Denebola 19, an autonomous double rescue of Leelorf and Megan Kerman in low Kerbin orbit. Y2, D194 - The Gemini 26 propellant depot, which had five docking ports for incoming and outgoing vessels, was launched to Minmus orbit. The Tejat 3 lander docked to it and refueled on Day 203. Later that day, Algieba 6 launched the first crew to live on Castor Base (Jebediah, Handorf, Bob), docking with the depot on Day 213. The crew transferred into Tejat 3 and landed less than 200 m away from Castor Base, deployed experiments, then entered the habitat. Systems were activated, including the small nuclear reactor keeping everything powered and the radiators that dissipated its heat, as the skycrane jettisoned and softly landed about a dozen meters away (it could be disassembled into Material Kits, but they would need storage for that). The next step was to increase the habitation space and provide a way for the crew to grow food.

Adding shorter 1,25 m methane tanks as in the FL-T100 and 200 but with 0.5 and 1 ton methane. Very nice for small SSTO and make it easier to adjust how much extra methane you want. For an LKO SSTO you need much less than on an plane exploring Laythe and then return to orbit. Add an drain valve so you can drain exec oxygen or methane. You want to drain all exec oxygen then entering the atmosphere. Also useful then your interplanetary ships carry extra metalox for landers, but here engines works better as they add dv and trust.

Wait. You went to laythe with a 100t payload? Did you record any of that? Would love to see it that must have been a pretty big transfer ship! I tried to make a ship with a 200 ton payload in ksp 2 the other day and my computer did NOT like that... i got 2 fps on the launchpad. It made me rage quit haha. In my duna mission in ksp 2 i used 4 stumpy medium hydrogen tanks soaking up all the heat. That went great! I'm glad we don't need heat shields there.

I landed on duna last week without heat shields. I did use some fuel to slow down a bit. Maybe 200 m/s? I'm not sure though. Just enough to not burn the craft to a cinder haha I noticed that the heat model in ksp 2 is less forgiving than in ksp1. I once travelled to duna in 120 hours and used aerobreaking to land (in ksp1). I don't recall the exact speed I entered the atmosphere...but it sure was at ludicrous speed haha. In this case I did use a heat shield, but hardly any ablator was used! I don't know if I could do this in ksp 2 though haha. I should try!! I made a small video of the mission if you're interested.

My issue isn't that there is a restriction. My issue is that it's too restrictive. Sorry, but not all of us are adept or even capable of designing airplanes. I've got 1000+ hours in KSP1, and more than 200 in KSP2, and I can't build a craft to fly in the atmosphere for 2 minutes. Now go tell a new player to do that. Make it less restrictive. The amount of time it takes is too long.

I managed to get to Mun and Minmus and do the major science missions around those, but now I am stuck. I am down to two missions: the Duna discovery mission and the "Lil Chonker" mission. I can't seem to succeed in either. I have medium rockets unlocked, but can't seem to lift a 200 ton lander on Minmus and wondering if I need heavy to do that? Actually, that isn't true, I landed a 250 ton lander on Minmus and didn't get the credit. I am assuming it dropped below 200 tons when I finally landed. So I built a heavier one, but haven't been able to get it to minmus without just burning the extra fuel anyway due to the weight/thrust needed to get it off Kerbin. For Duna, I didn't seem to have enough fuel to land properly (chutes don't seem to work). So then I thought maybe I need to drop a rover or something, but realized I still need some sort of braking to land it safely. Maybe I just need to learn more about how to maximize burn efficiency to do either mission. Any advice? Finally, some feedback: I've run out of science and can't unlock more. I've tried to gather some from various biomes on Kerbin and Mun, but it feels tedious. Being newer to the game, I actually like the rails of the science progression. This coupled with the training center has made the game a lot more enjoyable for me. But now I just feel stuck. I wish there were more landmarks, or missions to send me to different parts (biomes or regions) with more purpose. Right now it just feels like I'm randomly trying to find science, which coupled with my frustration of Duna and Lil Chonker, got a bit tired of the game as a result.

Ok finally done with Duna landings, well has one left at the monument and just radiation readings so unmanned and waiting with is as seriously bored of landing on Duna. Now as most of the "dry" mass of the Duna ship was metalox 32 ton for lander, lander took 5 ton but I tended to only use 4 and lander was fully fueled so 8 landings who was the number needed. Now as the last landing will be unmanned it need less than 200 m/s to deorbit and land. but dropped fully loaded. Who left this with this. 10 km/s dV, lets get home fast Unfortunately its an bug in KSP 2, who messes up your trajectory if you leaves the sun SOI. But less than 80 days is decent from Duna, overtake the previous missions, the large nuclear engines rocks. Final trajectory. Might not be able to circulate at LEO but not like I will use this ship again having unlocked the big round tanks so probably drop capsule and aim for the mun. Also seen is the first Moho mission ship on eternal patrol, second going to Moho, the 300 ton lander for Duna, first Duna mission and in the back the 4 ships heading for Jool.

new fanart lets go this time jeb makes the reentry profile a bit too shallow (-200 km or so) and they burn up in the atmosphere hilarious

The Moon orbit is unstoppably raising, and the Earth:Moon mass ratio is much less than the Jupiter one. So, no stable orbits in the Earth moon system. And at the same time no possibility to build a stable base, so much less interest from any view but the bare flag planting. The first, close, big Moon is significant from the military and then-looking-actual industrial pov. The second, far, small Moon would interest nobody but nerds. While irl the lunar program was funded with active support of the military, the mini-moon would be waiting for its turn like the asteroids. I remember the decade-old posts there about the (ULAlian, not nuke) Orion flights to the asteroid, then to the near-Earth asteroid, then to at least a captured piece of stone in HEO. These posts would stay actual in that reality, too, just the Orion's target name would change. The same users, who are blaming SLS, would be doing it to Nova, that's all change. In the USSR the space race was actively doubted by the military, who were not once asking for proper reinvestment. The Korolyov's participation to the lunar program was forced, distracting him from his dream of life, the expedition to the Mars. Originally, in 1920s-early 1930s, Korolyov and Glushko were just two of several tens of groups, developing rockets of more-or-less same level, never exceeding several hundreds of kgf thrust (~Aggregat-1&2). They were arrested due to the struggle between the teams in the institute, and the opponents in the known collective denunciation were pointing at the fact, that the only results of their eight-year activities were a 200-kg winged missile with 30-kg payload, and a small glider with a small rocket drive, so the funds had been spent on nothing. It was also playing a role, that (unlike for other development teams) their patron was marshal Tukhachevskiy, a big fun of then-hi-tech in army, so they were funded and raised as his protegee. At the same time, this means that they were in low orbit at then-scandalous scam of the "dynamo-reactive guns of Kurchevskiy", when Tukhachevskiy was actively promoting recoilless guns and cannons everywhere, including tanks and heavy artillery, as a cheap replacemenr for the normal cannons. Of course, this strange idea failed, after having eaten a lot of budget money and delaying the upgrade of artillery. So, when the scam was stopped, all Tukhachevskiy's protegee were hit by recoil. Especially the most known ones. Especially spending money without results. Especially conflicting with the solid-fuel department, who were providing actual results. (Though, the solid-fuel tops were executed a little earlier, due to the struggle between the teams and the parties.) In 1940s Glushko had developed a 1.5-tf rocket engine for a glider, which became 1.1-tf after making it human-rated by another engineer. I.e. corresponding to Aggregat 3&5, when Walter Thiel's Aggregat-4 engine was already 25..28 tf. You should not think that on the German side the things were going much wiser. The whole Aggregat series (which fruited into V-2) was starting from the idea of a long-range 14" artillery shell with a rocket engine, which would throw it farther than powder. Originally the Aggregat-1 was to be stabilized by rotation, without gyroscopes or so, but on realizing that the rotation will prevent the fuel sucking, they decided to rotate the warhead, leaving the booster motionless. After making the rotating warhead mockup and exploding the first and the only A-1 on start, they screwed the rotating warhead, and put the amateur "gyroscope" in the middle, launching the two and the only Aggregat-2 just once. Realizing that the shell is failed, they began Aggregat-3 (<<< the in-war imprisoned Glushko is nearly here) shaped as a an aircraft bomb with an alcohol booster inside. As they were trying A-3 and A-5 launches from He-111, we can presume that the idea of the shell turned into idea of rocket-propelled long-range bomb. On failing the vertical launches of A-3, they turned to big rockets like A-4 (as big as a railroad carriage can contain, the fin span is 3.2 m), which were succesfully eating the German money on the sick (20% sorted out on the plant, 40% of launched had exploded), useless (1-2 human casualties per A-4) rocket program. That's because they hadn't imprisoned von Braun in time, lol. Von Braun himself is a strange, murky persone, closely associated with another one, even murkier one, Hans Kammler, who was the head of secret weapon development and KZ camps development, but mistically lacks any attention. The Aggregat series was developed not by von Braun alone, but by the whole department of arms, where von Braun was not the boss. The key components like the engine (by Walter Thiel), the C&C, the aerodynamics were provided by other people. Von Braun's role looks more like a curator, than like a real engineering developer. His kinda developed A9/A10 project looks like a scam. While he was doing aerodynamic experiments with the models. the A10 engine was a pure fantasy, changed from six A-4 28-tf engines around the single nozzle to a 200-tf alcohol engine (the practicallyreached top limit of the alcohol engines is RD-103, 45-tf), so we can assume that beyond a couple of failed launches of winged A-4b, there was no serious development behind A9/A10. The A11 and A12 stages for his space rocket "were using" the same never-developed super-engine, so they are just a pure scam, sold to Americans to prevent the von Braun's extradition to the British, who were glad to ask him about the London bombing. All components of Saturn/Apollo were developed by the American companies, so the von Braun's role looks totally PR, and this in turn returns us from the romantic dreams to the real roots of the American lunar program, which are concentrated as Project Horizon. Meanwhile in the far, snowed Russia. After making the R-7, an ICBM useless as ICBM, Korolyov was putting all efforts on killing the hypergolic rocketry, which efforts had fruited into separation of the Yangel and Makeev rocket bureaus, and raising the Chelomei's bureau in ballistic missiles, and thus into dismissing the Korolyov's bureau from the military development and losing him leading position in space launches, he started developing N-1 (another cryogenic non-ICBM ICBM, without any possibility of further development) and the Martian ship. The whole department in bureau was developing the TMK (Heavy Martian Ship) under the Tikhonravov's leadership. (Btw, Tikhonravov came into rocketry before Korolyov, he had developed the very first working semi-liquid engine in 1920s). As ~5 t of canned supplies was looking too heavy for the crew of 3, they were developing a whole on-board space farm, with kitchengardens and animals. A ten of agricultural plants would be farmed under the solar light, rabbits and some others would be herded to provide meat, chlorella vats would refresh ing the air, etc. But as Mars is 1.5 times farther from Sun than the Earth, the sunlight is weak. So, they added a huge parabolic reflector to insolate the garden. But on the Martian orbit the ship will be rotating every hour, so the garden would be shaded. So, they made the mega-mirror truss mechanically rotating. But the motor needs energy. So, they added 15 t of fuel to rotate the mega-mirror truss. Another part of command was developing 100-t Martian rovers with 6-m wheels, and other things. Thus, the Korolyov's team was wisely spending the budget funds on the highly realistic designs, and competing with Yangel and Chelomei were doing all daily dirty work of ballistic and cruise missile development. Meanwhile almost all rocket engines were being provided by the Kosberg and Isayev bureaus, but for some reason the heavy RD-253 was possessed by Glushko. Khrushchev had formulated the lunar objective very clearly and simply: "We'll not give away the Moon to the Americans". This can be treated as a PR flag planting, but all further development show that the most sober and insightful Soviet leader was meaning the practical aspect, to prevent the monopolization of the Moon by the opponent. Thus, once Proton and E-8 crafts had provided the ability to destroy any American lunar base before it could become operational (see the underdeveloped Death Star destruction in SW), the lunar program was immediately stopped, and the Korolyov's fantasy space program as well. So, the "Space Race" was existing only in the heads of PR journalists, and another moon would not affect it.

200 Δv seems fine - I always aim at having about 300 Δv. Then Im sure I wont bounce off the atmosphere. I make sure my craft is empty once the final burn has been done though. dry mass vs fueled mass is a big difference. and you glide a lot better if your vehicle weights nothing. I usually aim here: What makes aiming super tricky is how far the planet has rotated before you get bellow 70km. Now you can extend the glide a lot in the 70-40km by holding a pitch 10-20° Angle of Attack. I've sometimes gotten "stuck" bouncing off the Stratosphere (the ~40km mark) until you bleed off enough speed to enter. If you manage that you can really extend the glide. The 30km to 40km is your last chance to extend or shorten the glide. Once your below 30km, depending on your glider.. you only have 20-40km you can travel. If you haven't seen it, I can highly recommend the video about landing a shuttle that Sylvi linked on Tap 3. I made a habit of quicksaving before doing the deorbit burn. See how far I could glide and adjust until I knew where to start the burn to line the runway up propper. I never time my launches x) I just time warp and wait for a good window to arrive: The old method your vehicle orbit time is slower than the target. So at some point you will get a window that is less than 10.000km - although I think I have corrected as big margins as 20.000km. But the new method is always the same... once you have your ~10km orbit bellow target. you just have to wait until your directly beneath it. then burn about 10 Δv to rendesvous with it and then another 10Δv to match the orbit. I might start wait for good windows with this method.. as a bad window can leave you in time loop for a while x) but still.. the consistency in how much Δv you use is nice i think. But my station is only at 100km - I think you can make it easier by just reversing.. method one, you know AP at 200 and PE at a 100 or so? I dont know how well method two is at more than 10km difference in orbit. Aaand I can imagine at 190km the orbit period is quite extensive. I strongly believe in documenting your failures too - it gives you some data to theorycraft with x) Well my large tugs were also the second stage - no reason to not use perfectly good vacuum optimized engines you could also go for a split wing tail - man 1.900 Δv is a lot! You are also a lot higher up though. My station is at 100km It may be easier for you to aim your decent if you start by getting down to a 70-80km orbit and then do the final deorbit burn from there. Makes aiming a lot easier. Yeah. Its hard to gauge from a screenshot. but with your angle of attack at 20° and a speed of 39.5m/s I assume you should be able to land it no problem. My gliders never produce that... I simply go through the atmosphere too gently. Any way.. I can see you also re-entered following your prograde. meaning you get the shortest tour through the atmosphere as possible (except for if you entered at 90° ofcourse). With a Angle of Attack (AoA) on 0° you cant extend the glide. The danger of flipping is also none existent. The shuttle re-entered with a 40° AoA for instance. I find with a AoA on 10-20° you can have trouble re-enter the atmosphere. You can experiment with that. Not at all. But if we are going to make a habit of it. I think a private threat would be a better option. (just to keep the already bloated thread on topic ) I hope my thoughts and comments will help you in your future endeavor - I have contemplated starting a For Science Campaign.. but I think there are enough avenues I can explore just in sandbox mode.. before I need other things to entertain me. btw I took an FPS count last time I was at K.G.01.. its not flashy: So I guess I am also just a very patient person x)

Any capsule or probe has a range of 200Mm, but the communotron 16 and communotron 16-S antennas only have a range of 500Km. Shouldn't it be the other way around? As they stand now, communotron antennas are useless. Or I'm wrong? 500Km = 500,000 meters and 200Mm = 200,000,000 meters.

Someone did here's the https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.technologyreview.com/2021/12/07/1041420/spacex-starship-rocket-solar-system-exploration/amp/Article, ( and there was a open letter by some people at NASA talking about using starship and that NASA need to start to dream big). Just to give an example: a deep space fully refueled V3 starship can give a 9KM/s DV to a 150 tons payload. And if that payload is a 15 tons probe, and 135 tons fuel with an engine with storable propellant that has 300 seconds of ISP, this gives the 15 tons probe 7 km/s, enough for a direct transfer and propulsive brake to Neptune. With a probe 20 times heavier than voyager. But transfer time with a Hohmann is 30 years to get there. If we could speed up and down 0.5km/s (1km/s total) the travel time get cut to 12 years, and we would probably still talk about a 10 ton probe. And numbers get even more stupid if we start to refuel starship to a tanker that is fully fueled on a highly hell optical orbit, like getting a 500 ton probe to Jupiter orbit, or 200 tons to orbit one of it's moon, all done with only propulsive method.

////////////////////MISSION_UPDATE\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ H.T.D.01 and H.T.D.02 enroute to K.G.01 Foreword: So. I have been taking it a bit slow refueling K.G.01 - The two H.T.D. were 6 days from their maneuver node, and rather than timewarp I spend the days developing the vehicles for a Minimus Mission - which I will do as my first mission after this. Maybe a permanent Mun settlement too? Who knows. Any way - I was well under way with refueling K.G.01 When I ran into another Issue... a reoccurring issue. The glider is off balance again. I decided to upload the current process on the refueling, before going into re-re-re-redevelopment of the glider. Mission Tasks: A. Return the two Hydrogen Tanks from K.G.02 to K.G.01 B. Refuel K.G.01 with Methalox C. Refuel K.G.02 with Hydrogen Lessons Learned; Lessons Identified: A. H.T.D.01 and H.T.D.02 arriving at K.G.01 This step went without issues - I found that its really "easy" to send two at a time by using the "connect the two drones" after each maneuver and "disconnect the two drones" before the next. The added time it takes to connect/disconnect and co-ordinate prograde and burn timer + timing the actual burn and kill relative speed afterwards is worth it. Not only for the aesthetic of seeing the two vehicles flying together. But also making sure that the rendezvous goes smooth. Especially around The Mun it can take weeks to rendezvous with K.G.02 because of the slow orbit... and you can easily end up juggling multiple vehicles rendezvous - as seen when building K.G.02, were some of the first parts to arrive were the last to be connected due to a bad transfer window. It has also, technically, reduces the amount of tours from 4 to 2. The only negative is it uses a lot more monopropellant than if you send them individually. For detailed walkthrough see spoiler section bellow: B. Methalox H.T.V. enroute to K.G.01 to refuel the station. The time had come to the last step before both stations would be fully operational - fueling up K.G.01 How ever when I was going to load the vehicle file of the Heavy Tank Vehicle... It had disappeared? I dont understand how.. I must have accidently deleted it when I cleaned up my work files for vehicles. Luckily this blog aided me immensely in reverse engineering the vehicle quick. All the way from what parts to spacing etc. By looking at the images I had the rocket down again in a 20 min time - and by 2nd refueling mission the wings, grid fins and aerobreaks had been "balanced" on the 2nd stage, so the vehicle would fly nose first through the atmosphere again. While I was doing the refueling missions (I did 1-2 launches pr/afternoon) ESA successfully launched the Axiom 3 mission to ISS. On their Facebook profile they showed this simplified explainer on how dragon reaches ISS: I thought it was very interesting that they would take a 7.5km lower orbit than the target and then burn to intercept it when they were right "beneath it". I have always done an approach were my Apogee is + ~60-80km of the target Apogee and the perigee is +/÷0km to the target perigee - and then I just waited for them to intercept-ish and then correct the last by either burning Radial In or out. It can be very situational how many orbits it takes for this to happen - and depending on how lazy you are, it's a vastly different amount of Δv used for the last correction burn. With the ESA Dragon approach, it is very easy to make sure you spend the same amount of Δv pr. Mission as you remove the last step with fine tuning the rendezvous burning radial In//out. The most interesting things to find out would be this: How much Δv is saved by doing this? and how long time does it take to catch up to/wait for the target to catch up, doing this? As you can see I adopted a ~10km lower orbit than K.G.01 which is currently orbiting at a 98 -102km orbit or so. It resulted in me being 12.5km away from the target when I was directly below it. It actually goes surprisingly fast with catching up to the target. The furthest I was away from K.G.01 this time, was a time were I was on the uppersit side of Kerbin than K.G.01 after I reached my target orbit. It took 1 Kerbin day to catch up to K.G.01 - which means that It will never take more than 2 days to catch up to the station.. presuming that you reach orbit at the worst possible moment. As you can see the vehicle had Δv 1460 Δv left (the number is actually lower, as the craft is counting the cargo of 12t methalox into its Δv amount) The Prograde burn to catch up with K.G.01 is only 10 Δv and some fine tuning with the RCS thrusters as seen here: I dont have exact numbers - but this maneuver, on average, definitely goes faster time warp wise (it is slower to perform as you need to be more precise with managing your PE/AP) and I think I save somewhere close to 200-300 Δv compared to my old method. The refueling went fine with H.T.V. and the last load of methalox would have to be supplied by the Methalox glider. For a detailed mission walkthrough for the H.T.V. See spoiler section bellow: The last bit of the mission required me to use the Methalox gliders of old. I decided to tweek the 1st stage by adding a "Spark" engine to help flip it - as it really speeds up the process on the H.T.V. 1st stage. I also decided to try do stage separation at 1800 Δv and ~1200 m/s rather than 1600Δv of old. It means that the 1st stage has around 350 Δv to land once it's gotten safe back through the atmosphere (burning at ~15% thrust with 3/7 engines to not lose the engine plate) The new design looks like this: Methalox Glider coasting away from the 1st stage performing burn and flip maneuver. This means that the Methalox glider has an extra 200 m/s for free - and saves methalox. that together with the revised docking method gives the glider a total of 300-400 more Δv for the re-entry burn. I had a lot of "trouble" that stemmed from the vehicle only having on average 300Δv to do the de-orbit burn. Only reducing the speed so much that it would bounce off the atmosphere and thus bleed of its speed slowly. This "sucked" as I also wanted to see a hot re-entry... Unfortunately the vehicle still dont produce flames on re-entry.. I think the dev team can turn up the heat a bit - It's "too hard" to get vehicles to burn on re-entry x) Any way with 300 more Δv it is now possible to break the glider enough to the atmosphere clean. How ever! this has revealed that the glider is off balance yet again. The first attempt I re-entered with a AoA at 40° - and it flipped to fly engine first. Then I tried an AoA 30° and then 10°... It kept flipping.. And I dont understand Why! The VAB clearly shows that the Center of mass and Center of Drag is far apart.. and mass is infront of drag!: The vehicle is in perfect balance when flying sub 1000m/s - It can even maintain a ÷20° prograde pointing ÷10° to the horizon and going 51 m/s at 4km altitude without stalling. SO... I have No idea why it's so unstable going through the hot re-entry. Now.. Any sane person would just let it coast from 2000 m/s to 700 m/s by bouncing on the atmosphere.. and then glide easy down to KSC sub 1000 m/s avoiding flips - but not me.. So We are back at it again... Redeveloping the glider. See detailed walkthrough in the spoiler section bellow: Moving Forward: Only the refueling of Hydrogen on K.G.01 is left - and an investigation on why the glider has become unstable on re-entry again. I feel, with how every patch seem to drastically alter how winged vehicles perform, that tweeking and rebuilding the glider will be a continuing reoccurrence. Next post will be on the re-re-re-redevelopment of the glider and the refueling of Hydrogen. Stay tuned for more - on this never ending story.

Part 6: Need for Speed: Tylo Flying Christmas Tree 2 drops Tamarromobile on Tylo. It's a completely different experience than it was with Dancing Porcupine, with sustained speeds between 150 to 200 km/h. As Tylo is big, this piece of report only covers the first half. The second half of the circumnavigation is still underway. Two pictures to get a clear view of the western emisphere of Tylo. Flags are 90 km apart Meaning that between flags 10 and 11, as well as 15 to 16, I crossed 90 km in 28 minutes. It gives an average speed of 193 km/s (53.5 m/s, close to the maximum of the wheels at 58 m/s), but the time includes planting a flag. 6.1) I thought docking issues would be a thing of the past 6.2) Beautiful desolation 6.3) Mountains ahoy! 7.4) Bonus: Back to El camino de muerte

A person is a bag of water, so their hydrostatic pressure would balance with the outside pressure. It would be similar to deep-sea diving, without a hardsuit. The recreational dive limit is 100', with heliox mix 200' and more is possible. So at 9 gees, being under 1' of water would be like being under 8'-9' of water, which is easily doable although it gets painful on the ears without equalization (a skill I never mastered; I even have difficulty popping them during an airliner descent). As to how practical or effective it is, I don't know, I ran across the concept while reading Arthur C. Clarke's (with Gentry Lee) Garden of Rama (unofficially aka Rama III in the Rendezvous With Rama series)

Well that's actually not bad, although it's not the same as what you said before. Regardless of that, when I'm looking at an initial TWR of 0.15-0.4 on LKO, which is usually how it is for my long-range transfer stages and space planes, I'll generally divide the dV required to get up to just short of Munar capture (~830 m/s) into at least 3 separate periapsis kicks of 2.5 minutes or less. If you divide those evenly across your point of ideal instantaneous ejection, i.e. where you'd place the node in KSP1, your cosine losses up to that point are pretty trivial. If you're going to Duna or Eve, you can set up a Munar assist from there that will get you an intercept for less than another 100m/s. If you're not going to bother with that, you can do the rest for a little over 200 with just another final kick, still losing very little from boosting off prograde. If the destination is further out however, requiring more than ~400m/s above a minimal Kerbin escape trajectory, there are other things you can to reduce wasted dV on the long final burn that's required. One of these is to raise your PE to 500-1000km from your distant AP, which costs you a little in dV terms due to Oberth losses, but more than pays for itself with the reduced cosine losses you'll suffer doing that long burn out of a slightly slower and significantly higher-radius orbit. If you're doing a Munar assist, you can also divide your final burn into two shorter ones at your Kerbin and Munar PEs, taking maximum advantage of the Oberth effect in both places. As I said before, I have done a whole lot of this sort of thing in KSP1, and planning such maneuvers under that system is something I can do in my sleep. In KSP2, I have still not figured out how to do it anywhere near this precisely. Lastly, for Tylo or any other vacuum body, the most efficient possible (theoretical) landing plan is to set your PE to zero and do an instantaneous retrograde burn of exactly your surface velocity at exactly that point. As this is of course impossible, the best physically plausible approximation of that is to plot a purely retrograde, continuously full thrust "suicide" burn, starting at whatever point prior to that tangent PE that will bring your velocity to exactly zero when you reach the ground. This is not an easy thing to do, especially for Tylo, and definitely not something you want to attempt with a marginal TWR, but to the extent you can approximate that descent profile, you will make it more efficient. TBH, I never really use a maneuver node to try to set this up, because neither system will have you boosting in the most efficient, continuously retrograde manner. So I usually just seat-of-the-pants it, giving my F9 key some exercise if I come in hot or stop too short. On that score, I'd say that stopping at 2km up on Tylo would probably be a do-over for me, as even a near-instantaneous braking burn near the ground from there will cost you over 210m/s, and in practice you'll probably spend closer to 400-500 to put yourself down safely.

Issue with this is that they have to have radio or they could not hear the satellites. Radio is just 125 year old, much less in practice as in able to communicate with an satellite even if pretty powerful. Assuming we do this in 200 years. The alien will be less than 300 year behind us or ahead, so ahead is much much more likely and we are likely to could talk directly to them, but sending an probe with data would make sense. If not they could not get anything from the satellite and you have to land, if they are doing agriculture you should probably be able to spot that from orbit. Send down an lander. If they don't have fields with crops they would be hard to spot. Named this image first contact, an cat like alien trying to eat an small rover. We did not know of them before she spotted the rover and went to investigate.

Y3 D325-Y4 D169 - Jool Explorer So, hot on the heels of the departure of Draco, we have another historical event taking place: The arrival of Jool Explorer at the Jool System! If you recall, Jool Explorer was launched all the way back in the middle of Year 1, almost two and a half years ago! Heck, that was all the way back when Jerry here was an intern! Ha ha! What's that, Jerry? You're still an intern? Oh. Well. Talk to KR about that. In any case, as Jool Explorer is approaching its goal, this is a good time to review its mission objectives: Minimum Objectives (If we don't accomplish at least this much, we'll wind up sitting in front of a Kongressional hearing.) One flyby of Jool One flyby of Laythe Primary Objectives (These are the objectives that the probe has been designed to achieve.) Two flybys of Jool Two flybys of each of Jool's large moons: Laythe, Vall, and Tylo Deploy one atmospheric probe on Jool and one on Laythe Secondary Objectives (Once the Primary Objectives have been completed, if the probe has any capability left, we will attempt to accomplish these additional objectives.) Flybys of Jool's minor moons: Bop and Pol Additional flybys of Jool and its large moons. So, this morning, Jool Explorer crossed over into Jool's SOI. Our first task is to adjust its trajectory coming in to the Jool system. The folks over in Orbital Dynamics have worked up a plan for us that will let us use a gravity assist at Laythe to capture Jool Explorer into the system rather than burning fuel, which will help extend the life of our propellant load. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of gravity assists...well, go ask the guys in Orbital Dynamics. There's a reason I'm in management. This maneuver will also check off our first minimum objective with a flyby of Laythe. So Jool Explorer burns at the very edge of the Jool system to set up its capture maneuver. However, as we all know, the Jool system is huge. It's going to be almost sixty days before the Laythe flyby. So, back to work, everyone. We'll get back to this in a couple months. ---------- Well, here we are back with Jool Explorer on Day 384. The Science team has been hard at work over the last several weeks getting preliminary readings from the experiments on board Jool Explorer, and they've already been releasing some stunning photography. Today is the day we discover if our burn two months ago was good. Jool Explorer is rapidly approaching Laythe. And, so far, it appears that we are right down the middle of the slot. Science has all of their instruments and cameras ready to go for our first flyby. We'll be passing about 140 kilometers away from the surface. And we have our first successful flyby! Flight just got back and let me know that their numbers indicate that Jool Explorer has successfully captured into an elliptical orbit around Jool. Excellent work! So now Orbital Dynamics is getting to work on plotting the next burn, which should be at JEs first apoapsis in a couple of days. ---------- Day 387 now, and Jool Explorer is getting set to burn at its Jool apoapsis. This burn will set us up for releasing our first atmospheric probe into the atmosphere of Jool. The burn was successful, so Jool Explorer is now on a sub-orbital trajectory for Jool. We'll get back to it in a couple of days for the probe separation and burn. ---------- And now we're back on Day 389. Jool Explorer is about an hour away from entry to Jool's atmosphere, which we obviously would like to avoid. So, first up, we trigger the separation of the Jool Atmospheric Probe. Then Jool Explorer immediately turns and burns to increase its periapsis above Jool's atmosphere. This would not be the time for an engine failure. <nervous laugh> But, thank goodness, that burn was successful. Now we can turn our attention back to the atmospheric probe. This is an important milestone of the mission, so obviously we hope that the periapsis was set to the correct height to ensure proper entry. <glances nervously over at the Orbital Dynamics folks sweating in the corner> The probe enters the atmosphere and is almost immediately enveloped in plasma, entering radio blackout. It's a long five minutes. But eventually, radio contact is restored. The probe survived atmospheric entry! It immediately begins radioing back data from its instruments. When it reaches about 200 kilometers below entry, its parachute deploys. It continues to sink deeper into the Joolian atmosphere, sending back pressure, temperature, and spectrographic data as it goes. However, although the probe is tough, it is not indestructible, and the Joolian atmosphere is unforgiving. Finally, after sinking an amazing 500 kilometers into Jool's clouds, the probe stops transmitting. That was an incredible outcome, and I'm sure the Science team will be parsing through that data stream for a long time. Meanwhile, Jool Explorer's instruments have not been idle, and they have recorded their data from their first flyby of Jool, meeting our second minimum mission objective. So, we have met the minimum mission requirements! Now JE is headed back up to its apoapsis above Jool, and OD will be plotting our next move. ---------- Back at periapsis on Day 393, and Jool Explorer is burning prograde this time to set up another flyby of Laythe. This is a pretty major burn, but it will set us up for the release of the Laythe Atmospheric Probe, which is a major milestone of the mission. So the fuel expenditure is justified. See you back in five days for the flyby. ---------- Back now on Day 398. Jool Explorer is approaching Laythe once again, this time on a suborbital trajectory. An hour away from entry, the atmospheric probe is released. Jool Explorer immediately burns to raise its Laythe periapsis...and its Jool periapsis? Or so the OD guys tell me. I don't get it either. I just keep pressing the "I Believe" button. In any case, Jool Explorer is safe now and recording data from its second Laythe flyby. Meanwhile the atmospheric probe is burning its way through Laythe's atmosphere and we're all holding our breath. The probe hurtles tantalizingly over a couple of major land masses... ...deploys its parachute... ...and settles into the ocean. That's fine. The probe floats. We'll probably get better data from Laythe's liquid water than we would from dry land anyway. In any case, another successful probe deployment, and a second Laythe flyby checked off of our primary mission objectives. Jool Explorer passes out of Laythe's SOI and then sweeps down to its Jool periapsis. The probe's orbit is very low now. The good news is that this gets us a very close flyby of Jool, which marks our second flyby of Jool itself and makes the Science team very happy. However, the low orbit will make it very difficult to perform flybys of the other Joolian moons. We could just burn to raise our orbit, but the Orbital Dynamics wiz kids have a better plan. They want to use another Laythe flyby to raise the probe's orbit with a gravity assist. So, here we are now, just a couple of hours out of Laythe's SOI, and we're burning at Jool periapsis to set up another Laythe flyby. I guess we'll see how that turns out in a couple of days. ---------- Well, Day 400 now, and Jool Explorer is swinging by Laythe again. After the flyby, Flight confirms that the gravity assist has raised Jool Explorer's orbit by a considerable amount. And Science has collected their data from Jool Explorer's third Laythe flyby. So now JE is back on its way to Jool apoapsis and we're setting our sights on the rest of the moons. ---------- Four days later now, Day 404, and we're back at Jool apoapsis. Orbital Dynamics has another burn scheduled that should set Jool Explorer up for its first Tylo flyby. Exciting! ---------- In other news: As Jool Explorer is coasting down Jool's gravity well, Draco reaches its mid-course correction burn on Day 406. The crew of Draco have been following the progress of Jool Explorer with great interest. (Because, let's face it, they don't have much else to do.) As they look out their windows and see Jool as a sparkling green gem in the sky, the Kerbol System doesn't seem so large after all.... ---------- Three days later, Jool Explorer is approaching Tylo for the first time. The probe swings by in a close pass and collects its data. It then exits Tylo's SOI and carries on. The next day, 410, Jool Explorer is back at Jool apoapsis. Orbital Dynamics assures me that a small burn here will set it up for another flyby of Tylo in a week or so. ---------- Day 419. We're back for our second Tylo flyby. This, unfortunately, is a more distant flyby. Science is disappointed. But OD assures me that there is a method to their madness. After Jool Explorer has exited Tylo's SOI, the probe burns again. And this burn sets it up for its first flyby of Vall next week. As an aside: Once this burn was completed, Flight sent me a notice letting me know that Jool Explorer has reached 50% of its initial fuel load. Good to know. ---------- It's Day 425 now, and we're excited that we're passing through our first Vall flyby! Science has all of their data, so Jool Explorer is just going to keep coasting for now. ---------- It's Year 4 Day 4 now. Happy New Year, everybody, hope you all had a good holiday. Jool Explorer is approaching Jool periapsis, and OD has a burn planned that will bring it back for its second flyby of Vall. That went well, Flight tells me everything is in order. It's a long haul back to Vall, but we'll see you back in a couple of weeks. ---------- Okay, Day 24, and Jool Explorer is flying by Vall for the second time. So, for everyone who hasn't been keeping score, this means that Jool Explorer has successfully deployed both atmospheric probes, and completed two flybys of Jool and all three of its major moons. This means that Jool Explorer has successfully completed its primary mission objectives! Since we still have almost 50% of our fuel load remaining, we've given the go ahead to start into the secondary mission objectives. Orbital Dynamics should be getting us some flight path options for those any day now. Right? <Orbital Dynamics guys look startled for a second, then run back to their offices.> ---------- Day 27. Jool Explorer is back at Jool apoapsis today. And Orbital Dynamics has given us a flight path that is...ambitious. The plan is this: Jool Explorer is going to make a minor burn at apoapsis today that will put it on a course to flyby Vall. It will get a gravity assist from Vall that will put it on a course to flyby Tylo. It will get yet another gravity assist from Tylo that will put it on a course to flyby Bop. I am pounding that "I Believe" button today. So Jool Explorer makes its burn. ---------- Day 28, we have our third flyby of Vall... ---------- Three days later, we have our third close flyby of Jool... ---------- Four days after that, on Day 35, we fly by Tylo for a third time... And after we exit Tylo SOI...well, I'll be damned. We will need a course correction burn, but not a major one. I guess that worked. Good job, folks. ---------- Now on Day 40 we have our course correction burn for Bop. We're right on target. Things move even slower here in the outer reaches of the Jool system. See you all back in two weeks. ---------- It's Day 54 and... Heerree'ss Bop! Science is very excited, although all it appears to be is a captured asteroid. Jool manages to look small from out here. So our next target in the extended mission is Pol. Unfortunately, there are no large moons out here to provide gravity assists. So we will just have to burn for it. Orbital Dynamics is working on a plan for that. ---------- So, did I mention that things move slowly out here? It is now Day 131, two and a half months since we left Bop, and we have finally reached the burn for Pol. Now we have to wait more than two weeks for the flyby. All for just another captured asteroid. <yawn> And Flight has just informed me that this burn brings Jool Explorer below 25% of its initial fuel load. ---------- So, it's Day 148 and we're getting the first pictures and data back from the Pol flyby... ...aanndd...that is not just another captured asteroid. I will be very curious to see what Science has to say about that one. ---------- So, after the Pol flyby we have some hard decisions to make concerning Jool Explorer. The probe has accomplished all of its primary mission objectives, and all of its secondary objectives. It has roughly 22% of its initial fuel load remaining. It is in the outer limits of the Jool system, with no gravity assist targets available, so any destination we pick for it will require a large expenditure of fuel. And there is a possibility that if the probe is allowed to orbit uncontrolled in the Jool system it may crash into Laythe, possibly contaminating its surface with the radioactive contents of the probe's radiothermal generators. So KSP management have decided that the probe should use its remaining fuel to achieve a controlled disposal in the atmosphere of Jool. Day 155, a week after the Pol flyby, Jool Explorer performs its final burn. ---------- Two weeks later, Day 169. Jool Explorer is a couple of hours out from entry now. Still sending back data. The probe is hurtling towards Jool's atmosphere at over 9,000 meters per second. This is the closest it has ever come to Jool, still getting good data on the planet. And as the probe enters the outer limits of the atmosphere...end of transmission. What a mission! Atmospheric probes deployed on Jool and Laythe! Four flybys of Jool, three flybys of Laythe, Tylo, and Vall, and flybys of Bop and Pol! A staggering amount of data! We'll be turning our attention to Draco and Duna here in just another week, but after this it will be hard not to be imagining what a kerballed Jool mission would look like. Eh?

Falki, amazing work! And you demonstrated with style and cool music to boot! It is my wish to help you hash out a solution to varying the effective height so one isn't too high on Gilly or too low on Jool, say... So let's summarize the design goals: 1-Make sense with the body size (high altitude on gas giants, low altitude on small moons, doesn't need to be precise, just roughly sensical) 2-Don't be so low we hit an atmosphere 3-Don't be so high we hit a SOI (like Gilly's) or a lower moon. (Jool vs Laythe, Duna vs Ike) 4-Make it forward-compatible with any future solar systems, such as planet packs or wherever we'll meet our alien cousins. 5-Give a hint to the proper altitude in the part specs, so we can plan interplanetary probes. Using pure math would result in weird numbers, would likely solve 1-4, 5 would be messed up. I had once suggested 'maybe classify worlds in 'Small bodies' 'Mid-sized bodies' 'Big ones' and give the values for all three in the parts, that would help with #5, but makes things tricky with #4 as you can't just make a list of Kerbol's worlds and put them in a table. ...Or can we? How about we look at a table with kerbol's bodiess, in order of body width, showing low moon's altitude/SOI limit, and atmospheric depth for the hell of it. I'm hoping this chart can help you figure out some good limiters for 'Small body' 'Mid Body' and 'Big ones'. Then we can pray those limiters would work with any future solar system. Body name Equatorial radius (m) Atmosphere depth (m) Maximum safe altitude (m) SOI limit or nearest moon's SOI SOI limit Nearest moon Pe minus moon SOI Radius (approx) Gilly 13 000 0 126 123 126 123 Pol 44 000 0 1 042 138 1 042 138 Minmus 60 000 0 2 247 428 2 247 428 Bop 65 000 0 1 221 060 1 221 060 Ike 130 000 0 1 049 598 1 049 598 Dres 138 000 0 32 832 840 32 832 840 Mun 200 000 0 2 429 559 2 429 559 Eeloo 210 000 0 119 082 941 119 082 941 Moho 250 000 0 9 646 663 9 646 663 Vall 300 000 0 2 406 400 2 406 400 Duna 320 000 50 000 2 000 000 Ike: 2 000 000 Laythe 500 000 50 000 3 723 645 3 723 645 Kerbin 600 000 70 000 9 500 000 Mun: 9 500 000 Tylo 600 000 0 10 856 518 10 856 518 Eve 700 000 90 000 14 000 000 Gilly: 14 000 000 Jool 6 000 000 200 000 23 000 000 Laythe: 23 000 000 Kerbol 261 600 000 600 000 4.2 Gigameters Moho: 4.2 Gm Looking at this, Gilly's a clear outlier, Duna and Jool are touchy, every other SOI is all over the place but easy to work with. Maybe you can get away with something like 'Small bodies - below 100 km radius' (Gilly, POl, Minmus, Bop) Maybe orbital survey 20km - 40km - 80 max? 'Medium bodies - 100 to 1000 km radius' (Ike to Eve) Current Orbital survey heights we know work well. 'Large bodies - above 1000 km radius' (Jool and Kerbol) Orbital survey needs testing... Anyway, hope that little chart helps you out. (I got the values from KSP1's wiki)

As far as I can tell, this part does not seem to work properly, at least for transmitters built into command pods/probe cores. They all seem to have a range of 200 Mm, which sort of invalidates the Communotron 16 and 16-S for any application that is not heavily reliant on bandwith. Is that something on my end acting up or something not quite working as intended?

ok for the alt calculation, Thx for adding comment Alt seems OK ! The time to burn is not Ie : Mission: To Minmus! t: 52:06 body: Kerbin msl/ter: 200.43 km /200.18 km atm: (in space) v: 1,868 m/s Node Burn: 0.0 s (41.1 %) dV: 0.10 (41.3 %) throttle: 0.01 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- eject at phase angle 114.7 ejection angle -1.0 dV: 844.93 m/s Maneuver: dt: 15:41 dV: 844.9 m/s stages: 1 burn: 49 s burn: 49 s stages: [#1 dv: 845 m/s t: 49 s 1x Methalox] Burn is planned in 15:41, but we miss Minmus. If I use MNC to adjust, it's more 14:20 to enter SOI (without changing the dV needed, with circular and good inclinaison 6° starting orbit)

So I managed to learn enough in Visual Studio to modify this mod. It can now automatically switch resolution and UI scale based on scene. All it needs is a config file with the scene name (e.g. 'EDITOR', 'FLIGHT', etc.). Each setting config now includes a "scale" attribute in addition to name, height, width and fullscreen. Bonus, now you can set the UI scale beyond the slider limit of 200% which is VERY nice. Let me know if you @linuxgurugamer are accepting pull requests. In the meantime... https://github.com/KerballOne/AnyRes

I just skip those missions. You're right. For the trouble you take to do this mission at this stage of the game, you're far better off just flying to Dres or something. I honestly thought 200 tons was a typo the first time I saw it.

We have the issue with items especially docking ports and probe cores overheating inside fairings if they are the front item who docking ports often is. So lots is going on on launch, aerodynamic, heating and of you use side boosters its additional forces in play. On top of this takeoff is also graphic intensive. It had been nice to be able to seal an fairing or cargo bay. Sealed it get the loaded weight and center of mass but is one item until opened. Obviously anything inside would not be usable until opened, this would be nice if you brings lots of probes or rovers. Having said this once in deep space I have no issues even during burns with ships with +200 parts.