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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?

Supplementary Electric Engines Download *Also on CKAN Dependencies: Module Manager, B9 Part Switch. The mod will not work without these mods installed. Recommendations: Waterfall This is a small mod that adds a few new types of electric engines that aren't already covered by Near Future Propulsion. The current lineup includes: Pulsed Plasma Thrusters - These square-shaped engines have fairly mediocre stats and can only run on the limited amount of solid fuel stored within them, however they are quite compact and fairly cheap. Resistojets - These tiny engines are not much more than a cold gas thruster with an electric heating element before the nozzle. Their performance is closer to chemical engines than other electric engines, however they take very little power to run and are incredibly cheap in terms of funds. Field-Emissision Electric Propulsion - This unique engine uses liquid Indium as propellant, which is a bit cheaper compared to Xenon gas. It has a very high Isp of 10,200 seconds, but a somewhat low thrust of only 0.8 kN. Future planned engines include: Arcjets This mod was originally inspired by Near Future Propulsion and its Pulsed Plasma RCS, which I thought would work well as a proper engine. After going through the process of learning how to make a part mod for KSP I managed to finish them, and since then I've gotten a few new ideas for things to add onto this... hopefully you enjoy these little parts, thank you. Liscense: CC-BY-SA

////////////////////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.

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?

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.

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)

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)

This mission was my competition in this challenge. I posted this mission report already there, but I do it here too for a larger audience, because I think, many people don't follow the challenge thread. Warning, many pictures following. ------------------- As I started this challenge months ago, I had 93 hours on my KSP clock and did only some of the training scenarios and the caveman challenge. At the start of the mission my clock is at 296 hours (I worked around 40 hours on another project). I not only had to deal with the difficulty of building a rocket and planning and flying a complex mission, I had also to deal with the KSP physics, which was often unexpected and frustrating. But now here we are, the mission is on the way. I will make the mission report in 4 parts. Episode 1 - From Kerbin to Gilly Episode 2 - From Gilly to Eve Episode 3 - On Eve Episode 4 - Form Eve to Kerbin Let's start with .... Episode 0 - Introduction If you followed the thread, you know, there was already a rocket, which was almost successful. It could fly to Eve, carry the equipment and come back to Kerbin. There was only one thing, which it couldn't do... standing on the ground. Here are some pictures of the Eve Science 6 - Nickname: The Monster. The name tells everything, it was huge, over 1500t on Kerbin and over 600t on Eve, with 3+2 Mammouth and 4 Vector engines on the launch pad. Compared to it the "tiny" Eve Science 9 - Nickname: Quasimodo. It only looks tiny, but it has almost half of the mass of the big one, because it uses the room very effective. The name comes from the early phase of the development. I took all the equipment of the old rocket and assembled it to the new one, an it looked really weird, because of the asymmetry. After I solved the bouncing issue of the plane, I had to change the plane deployment, which reduced the height of the vessel, and then I didn't have enough room for all four relay satellites, so I have only two of them in the final spec. Now the rocket doesn't look so weird anymore, and I like it. But now to the details. In the center there is the final stage with one Nutshell engine. It's used also as a booster during the transfer to Gilly and to de-orbit at Eve. At the front there is the Eve Plane, which will fly around Eve and collect most of its science. It uses only solar power to supply the two small electric engines of the two large propellers. At the back on the bottom is the ISRU and mining unit with the surface science equipment mounted on its bottom. Above it there is the return stage with one Nerv engine and also extra fuel for the final stage to refuel. On top there is the scanner satellite with one Spark engine. Both the return stage and the scanner acts also as relays. Between all these on the central axis on the bottom there are the transfer stages, both of them with one Nerv engine. On the top there are extra fuel tanks for the final stage, used at the transfers. On top there are the relay satellites, both of them powered by a Spark engine. Parallel to the central axis there are the main stages with 1+2 Vector engines each side. Finally there are the Kerbin booster stages with one Vector and one Mastodon engines each side. The last one has some extra fuel tanks attached. The settings, which are different to the standard. If you want to look at the parts in detail, I made just for fun some pictures of the mess, how it looks after everything is decoupled. Here are the difficulty settings. And here the inventory. Some special notes to the mission. I don't use gravity assist because of the lack of experience. I don't use aerocapture because of the strict interpretation of the rules (entering and leaving the atmosphere exactly once). I don't use heatshields because... I can. My goal is to collect 200 of the 203 possible science reports on Eve. I hope, I can post at least one episode each week. ------------------------- Episode 1 - From Kerbin to Gilly The journey begins (Aug 08-10) Kerbin ascent Kerbin escape Transfer to Gilly Establishing the satellite network EVA construction Searching for a landing spot Gilly landing ------------------------------- Episode 2 - Form Gilly to Eve Problems are there, to be solved (Aug 10-15) Refuel on Gilly Satellite network transfer to Eve and surface scan Waiting for the launch Gilly launch Eve transfer Preparing for entry Eve descent I'm already sure, that I can't complete episode 3 until next weekend. I decided to split it into two parts. The first part will come next weekend, the second one, when I finished flying around at Eve. -------------------------------------- Episode 3 - On Eve Part 1 - The first steps (Aug 18-21) Preparation First science on the ground The first flight Finishing the satellite network ----------------------------------- Episode 3 - On Eve Part 2 - The f(l)ight with the Eve Plane (Aug 21 - Sep 09) Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 The rest -------------------------------------------- Episode 4 - From Eve to Kerbin The way to glory (Sep 09-18) Before the launch Eve ascent (not an ordinary one) Docking with the return stage Transfer to Kerbin Coming home Final thoughts My philosophy on the mission was, to use the reload option only, when necessary, and I also didn't recreate the mission scenarios in a separate game. I practiced the Eve descent and ascent before I did it in the mission, but I used the saved game of the final test, and repeated it again and again, which was of course slightly different from the real mission scenario. During the whole mission, I reloaded the game only four times, but only two of them were really my fault. 1st reload: As I sent out Bill on EVA in Eve orbit to prepare the plane for Bob, I didn't catch him in time after leaving the command pod. He crashed against the structure, started to spin, and I couldn't catch him anymore. 2nd reload: At the preparation of the plane on Eve, I removed the unnecessary struts, and placed them on the ground, before I started to unfold the wings. The struts started to roll down the slope. After I finished with the wings, I switched the view between the kerbals and the vessels, and unfortunately, the focus switched to a rolling strut in a moment, when it left the radius, from where I can switch back. I could go back only to the tracking station, but this set back the game to the last quicksave, and that was, before I strutted the final segment of the wing, and after the game load, the wing was broken. 3rd reload: The terrain at the basalt formation was difficult. Sometimes I had to use full thrust to go uphill, and once I couldn't brake in time after coming over the crest, crashed against the basalt formation and lost one wing. 4th reload: I know, the controls don't work, when the mouse pointer is over the KerbNet window. But I had sometimes the same effect, even if the mouse pointer wasn't there. That happened also once at the start from Olympus and caused a crash. The challenge was longer, than I expected in advance, but it had also some unexpected situations, which made the mission exciting. My fear was, because I did so much testing, the mission could be just repeating everything. "Luckily" that wasn't the case. Now I have 380 hours on the clock, and looking forward to the next challenge. I worked already on it at the end of May, and I'm still not sure, if it's even possible, like I want it to do.

I searched the bug reports section and wasn't able to find this reported yet. I'm not making a bug report yet because I don't feel like I have much information about it. But over the last few days I've been launching a handful of ships and leaving them in Kerbin orbit. Sometimes when I switch back to them after doing something else, I've found them throttled up to full, burning fuel and changing their orbit. Now I'm 100% sure I shut off the throttles before switching away from the vessel. This might be because I'm launching a bunch of ships one after another, sometimes returning to the VAB to build another, sometimes reverting after a failed launch, sometimes switching to the tracking station or directly to another ship. It always seems to be only the throttle. I've never had a deactivated engine, activate itself. It doesn't seem to happen regularly or even that often. I can close and save the game and return to a vessel that was affected and it won't happen the next time. Maybe it's because I'm switching away or leaving the vessel right after cutting rhe throttle? And the throttle down isn't saved by the game when I leave it? I'll try waiting a bit after throttling down before switching away or doing a bit of time warp at zero throttle first in the future to see if that stops it. It might even throttle up, or forget that I throttled down shortly after switching away from a vessel. As on two occasions I've returned to a vessel after a while to find its throttle at full and it has burned more than half a tank of fuel I left it nearly full with. Though strangely without the change in orbit I would have expected. These were both huge hydrogen nuclear tankers, with between 200 and 400 tons of hydrogen. When I left them, their engines were off and the tanks were almost full. When I returned the engines were on full and the tanks were half empty. But they were still in stable circular obits of kerbin. I'll try and experiment with it after the new update tomorrow.

Hiya guys. So I've been having a docking problem for at least two weeks now, tried around a hundred methods to solve it, none did and I'm on the verge of going insane, because I can't progress with building the iSS. So currently I'm adding the P3/P4 trusses and solar panels, and for the love of god the half-hexagonal connectors (T-400 Truss Connection Mechanism (Integrated Type A) just don't want to dock/connect anymore. All went smoothly when adding the P1 and S1 Trusses to the main S0 truss, t docked perfectly without problem, but for some reason I can't progress any further, because no more trusses would connect. All other ports for ships and the shuttle work like the C-100, C-150 and the C-200, but the T-400 connectors don't work anymore. I've been moving these parts to their places with little grabber drones, and I haven't changed docking type, added more mods, nor flipped around the connectors. Also not even the magnetic thingy works when the connectors are close enough. It acts like they don't fit, or they are facing the wrongs way, but they just can't be facing the wrong way. Any ideas are welcome, and literally loosing my mind.

Hi! I just started playing KSP a little under a week ago, and I have been enjoying it a lot! The only issue, is that I launched a mobile processing lab orbiting the mun (it has a connection dw), but I have over 200 science but only 800 battery. I'm only able to transmit about half the science before it says "aborting transmittion." I can't send a portion like half of the science either, the require complete and allow incomplete settings on the antenna don't matter, it still won't let me send ANY of the science!!! This is maddening and I don't know how to fix it. If there's a simple button or something I'm missing, please help

The Minmus lander was sent off. The first landing was successful so plans were made for a short hop to a new biome. Which did not go well due to losing comms 100-200 meters above the surface. Mission accomplished, all objectives were achieved.

I restarted the campaign (woah, I forgot how many million FPS you get at first!) and progressed to Mystery Signal on Minmus and Lil Chonker. I have a fairly typical tech level for this point in the campaign and just unlocked NERVS. So I thought to myself. "Well, let's do both missions at the same time, because Lil Chonk is /totally/ worth the 35 science points reward." (sarcasm). So, got to work with a 260-ton lander with 4 poodles, several reaction wheels (because landers have to be maneuverable) and a couple NERVs for Minmus orbital burns and landing. We don't have landing gear long enough yet to clear poodles, so we're going to use some medium horizontal stabilizers as landing struts instead. Should be fine in the low gravity of Minmus if we touch down softly. 13 mainsails and 12 skinny solid boosters for the launcher, with little rocket engines on top and bottom to safely carry each stage away. And away we go (thanks to K2-D2 for controlling launch profile leaving me to concentrate on rotating the vessel to ensure each asparagus stage could drop cleanly). It turned out that the Kerbin TWR of the lander was about 0.50, which just coincidentally was very close to the TWR of the final stage of the launcher. So this meant I could just perform one continuous burn from LKO to Minmus and the projected trajectory would still be fairly accurate. I'd use up some of my lander mass, but that's why the lander is 260 tons and not 200. I like to put my vessels into polar orbits because it means with enough time I can reach any particular point on the body. This was no different. On reaching Minmus I gave the vessel a high AP and burned to change my inclination to 90 for about 50dV. After settling into a 16 000 m orbit, the landing site was only a few orbits away. This is a completely manual landing, thanks to Micro Engineer that gives you separate readouts for vertical and horizontal velocity. I've come to learn that the ideal burn for landing has you saying "too fast, it's gonna crash, too fast" until about the last 10 seconds. Also look at the pretty green reflected lights on the skin of the lander near the glowy bits! So pretty. Good job KSP2 devs. I had like 4700 dV remaining after the landing. So I scopped up all remaining science on minmus and head back to orbit for a Kerbin return. But, why waste dV on a direct burn when you can gravity assist off the Mun and return back for only 98 dV? Yes, I did that. Landed in the mountains, which I had yet to visit on Kerbin, so performed some science there and recovered the vessel! Yeah. That was TOTALLY worth 35 science points.

Still working on the orbital build to go to Duna. Yes, I know, I could probably do this in one launch. But I'm lacking some needed parts, and this gives me a chance to practice docking and building in orbit and such. Anyhow, I was able to get a second power arm attached to the Sekhmet I hub, as well as a communications hub. Two images: The first image is what we have in orbit currently, while the second image is a sneak peek inside the fairing at the end of the communications hub. For the first time in playing this game - over 1000 hours in KSP1, and 200+ in KSP2 - I used an engine mount. I wanted to have an antenna of some kind at the far end of the truss, but I needed to have a fuel tank and an engine to get this up there. I also needed to move the fuel from the existing spare tank to a new one (the existing spare tank is where the actual fuel tanks/engines for the interplanetary flight are going to be), so I used an engine mount to "hide" the antenna and keep the ability to have other parts on the thing. Once docked, I moved the fuel from the existing tank to the new one at the end of the communications hub, and then quick-saved so I could jettison that fairing to give a show of what it will look like. Gotta say that the engine mount is going to be getting some serious use in the future from me! I have but 2 gripes with this. The Sekhmet I hub wiggles all over the place. It will not stay true to any SAS direction, instead choosing to wobble around said direction. This is making docking difficult, and I'm finding I have to come in a little hot (to the tune of > 5 m/s in order to hit the target dead on). That stupid temperature gauge is annoying. I'm in orbit, not the atmosphere; I shouldn't have an overheated part. I may have to edit the JSON file and adjust the temperature of both the OKTO and the cargo bay it is inside of (I checked yesterday, and both of these are > 200 in spite of being in orbit). I still have to add: Interplanetary fuel tanks and engines A lander module I might add some habitation modules (Wayfarer's) in the event there is a mission to create a space station. Please do NOT spoil that for me; I do not want to know in advance if there is or not! Let it be a surprise!

The main feature of update was Exploration mode. Now I have goals to explore Kerbolar system. Lack of parts makes me to solve puzzles, how to achieve target with current parts, what parts should I unlock, where should I go. I have enjoyment from overcoming limitations and have feeling of progression during comliting missions and unlocking new parts. Second feature which makes me continue exploration is plot. It’s not cinematographic, but messages are funny and well writed, lore is very intriguing. But not all in exploration mode is well as it seems to me. I encountered missing text for science reports which was written as “default message” or “crew assess environment and collect its characteristics”. The well written examples are soil sample reports, now I didn’t see them written in default message style. Some missions in exploration mode are dishonest and absurd balanced. For example mission “LIL CHONKER” where you get only 35 points for delivering 200 tons Minmus, but for Kapy rock you get 200 points. In Kerwide Tour missions it seemed to me annoying to use cabin cans for my crafts. They are like they were made for planes, but instead doing any crew observations you must bring with you unsuitable parts which very much interfere your flight. Missions also suffer from an inadequate interface and lack of important position and orbit information that would come in handy during complex missions. For example, an orbit rounding mission gives the orbit parameters not as an eccentricity and a large semi-axis, but as a perigee and apogee. This is done due to the fact that the player has nowhere to see the eccentricity, although this is a very important parameter in orbital mechanics. As a result, this parameter will not be stored in the player's head and it will be more difficult for him to plan and execute more complex orbital maneuvers in the absence of this knowledge. Or the plot mission where you need to put a satellite into Minmus orbit. The inclination of the orbit of 45 degrees is proposed to be determined by eye. It is clear that this is not particularly difficult to do and it is so well chosen, but it greatly reduces the number of goals that could be set for the player. The game really needs a tool that shows all the parameters of the orbit with great accuracy. The window can be placed specifically for this purpose in the same place as the panels with the resource manager, details, etc. Very much interferes with the exploration process that you have to memorize in your mind all the places you have visited in order not to waste time flying to the same place 2 times. There is no archive for science reports and the most of your reports you see once in the campaign. You can miss story or lore if you skip them accidentaly. Also other things, like discoverables, are not saved on your map. After you found it game doesn’t add it as known object in tracking station. Founding of discoverables is interesting, but very time consuming process. You must fly above surface or drive rover for a very long time and it’s not a fact, that discoverable is big enough to spot it for a first time. I suggest to add scanner on 3-4 tech level, which can orbit celestial body and if it flies above discoverable it detects it and give a player a area on map, where player should search for it. Maybe telescope, which should fly above area of interest for certain time within the permissible speed range. It would create a new and interesting challenge for the player. There are no credits as in KSP1. At first glance it seems to be missing feature, but in my opinion in KSP2 it’s unnecessary layer. Not in terms that in future player must also control resources in colonies, but it motivates you to explore and fly instead of using mechanics like financial strategies. On the second tech tier I built rocket which delivered communication sat and lander to Moho without using any gravitational maneuvers, with KSP1 money restrictions I wouldn’t do it. So to gather science I went to Moho instead of farming some boring stuff in Kerbin SOI. My rocket was large enough and it seemed that there are no restrictions for craft size, but during construction of rocket I encountered one. It was mass. Without powerful engines you can lift heavy masses, and to unlock these engines you must collect science, do missions and fly to another places. But what could be taken from KSP 1 is the center for the recruitment of kerbonauts, so that you can quickly find out the list and statuses of all the kerbonats, because it is not very convenient to watch them in the VAB. After compliting Minmus plot mission I got mission to do the same but on Duna. Building interplanetary ships and mission to Minmus are much different things, and it seemed like it is very big leap for inexperienced players. Of course there was no timer and you can pracitce and collect science for unlocking parts building simple probe to Duna or to another planet, but for inexperienced players it can be non-obviously. And there were no secondary missions after comliting Minmus mission when player must send light probe to another planet, this mission would encourage players not to be afraid to try to send missions easier than landing on the Mun, but to other planets. During complex flights and missions there were some very big inconveniences with the map view. At the moment the map mode is very inconvenient to use, the screen is too cluttered. When trying to edit a maneuver, you constantly misclick because the cursor sensitivity zones are oddly configured, windows from different points in the orbits open and block the maneuver editor, when you turn the camera some parts of the editor disappear. With a large number of elements, a separate panel would be useful where all the maneuver parameters could be precisely adjusted: the velocity vector, the perigee argument, the number of the turn. It would be possible to find out from there the exact parameters of the orbit before and after Icons of all crafts look exactly the same and change size incorrectly when you change the distance from the camera. As the number of crafts increases, you need to hide some devices not only from the list in the tracking station, but also from the map for convenience. But there is no such option and you are forced to see all your units ever launched. After several launches in the map mode you get an unpleasant jumble. Using the list to select devices is also not convenient because there is no division into types of devices. The presence of filters of vehicles by type, such as manned ship, probe, satellite, lander, rover, etc. would give convenience, obviously visible visual difference and the ability to immediately find the desired craft. But so far in the game there is no possibility to set the type of vehicle to the control module. Also the game has an obscure naming system. After you have docked or undocked the units, they do not retain their original name and you have to remember what is what again. Setting the main unit in a bundle and the ability to rename control modules piece by piece, so that after docking and undocking for the resulting units were automatically assigned to the types and names you specify, would solve the problem. Such a system is available in KSP1. Workspace system in VAB is very incomprehensible, the game nowhere gives instructions on how to use it and it is difficult to understand waiting for an unaware player what its advantage is. Of course the update made a positive impression and I was able to get a lot more emotions when playing than before, but there are still a lot of problems in the form of some unbalanced missions, difficult and insufficient interface especially in map mode, serious bugs. But there's still room for improvement

I used the HT-240B. Only for a testflight. It is docked to the shuttle via C-200 CBM. I have installed IR + DockingFunctions + IRConnectionSystem + PayloadRetentionSystem.

Just had photos for the engineering club at my school; we're near an airbase. The planes were like 200' above us directly and doing dives and barrel rolls. I swear they were showing off.(They train daily here)

In an effort to recover some funds and make the whole endeavour profitable, a mission was launched to attach a control probe and parachute packs to the Phoenix's lifter, which I'd forgotten to do in the VAB. It all looked so promising. Alas, t'was not to be. Without airbrakes to slow the massive booster, nor enough spare fuel in the tanks, the stage was never able to slow to a safe velocity for even the drogue parachutes to deploy. The lifter hit the ocean at high velocity, destroying pretty much everything of value. This was rather pretty, though. Another contract involved getting crew reports from a pair of locations on Gilly. This mission was an absolute breeze, the only risk being if I accidentally timewarped into terrain. Yet another contract asks for a scan of a Duna Meteorite. While I could probably survey every Duna biome with the Matador, the lander has no scanning arm, and having to repeatedly land and take off from Duna in a craft with its low margins would be both time consuming and risky. As such, I designed a rover to do the job. At launch, its only science instrument was a Surface Scanner. Having realised I forgot the Scanner Arm, the thing that inspired this project in the first place, I sent up a mission to add one... except I got distracted and used that flight to carry deployable science experiments instead. I only realised after reaching orbit. So I sent another mission up, which finally installed the device. Let's hope it survives entry into Duna's atmosphere. I have updated the Krakatoa Ultra-Heavy Lifter (50 tons to LKO, reusable) with proper landing legs that don't explode. This is the Leopard Rover. The on-board habitat, cupola, recycler and hydroponics farm allow the vehicle to operate for around 200 days with a crew of four. It has a pair of advanced RTGs, solar panels, and an LFO fuel cell for power generation, to ensure that its hungry life support systems are always powered. Over 8,000 units of EC battery storage ensures that the 0.75 scale monster wheels can keep on trucking for a very long time. It also has a Bon Voyage controller, so I should be able to just set destinations and let it go while I handle other missions. The Matador's scientific instruments will be transferred to the Leopard, as a cheaper alternative to adding them prior to launch. On a final note, I find it odd that the original Bison command pod is more aesthetically pleasing to me than the Bison 2's. I tried to dock it with the 2m port but the wheels got in the way. Antelope will carry Leopard to Duna at the next window. It has plenty of delta-V to spare - 16,000 m/s. I considered increasing the size of the sustainer stage so Leopard could make the transit to Duna by itself, but rejected it on the basis that part of my philosophy for this entire series was that I didn't want to send whole armadas of vessels out at the same transfer window, because making sure they all arrive safely is a pain. That's also exactly how I ended up with the Ronin flying off into deep space. Better to have only two craft transit to Duna, even if it will split up on arrival. Next up, Eve contracts. I've got a tourist who wants a flyby, and a World Firsts requiring that I send something to Eve and land it back on Kerbin. That can be a command pod. I'm thinking I'll design a dedicated interplanetary crew transport, and have it bring whatever command pod carries the tourist up dock with it (has to to transfer tourists anyway) and bring it with for the whole mission.

The V-2 and R-7 turbopumps are rotated by H2O2 decomposition products. MHD can work on any fuel. A turbine needs just any expanding gas. The reason why the C-Stoff was abandoned is that post-WWII countries live on a planet with oxygen atmosphere and rich with natural oil. The Mars isn't. http://www.airpowerworld.info/aircraft-engine-manufacturers/walter-hwk-109-509.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_HWK_109-509 Its ISP is low, about 180 s, (17 300 N / 8 kg/s / 9.81 m/s2) It's not a fuel of choice when you have alternatives. But poor conditions sometimes need poor solutions. 0 .. 2° C (water and hydrazine freeze). But it's easier to keep a hangar +4°C warm than cryotanks -200°C cold. Also maybe it's wise not to keep it mixed (to store the hydrazine hydrate apart), so methanol can stay liquid even outdoors most part of the year.

Because of the low air density on Mars the lifting performance is approximately 200 times worse than airships on Earth. It has to be huge just to lift it's own envelope. And then you're at the mercy of the wind.