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Greetings While designing my latest craft, I was trying to work out what parachute setup will be required but I soon discovered that there seems to be a relative lack of information on this topic that can be easily found with the majority of information being vague rules of thumb for Kerbin sea level or an admonition for a simple "guess and check" approach. My hope is to find some more general purpose formula I can use to calculate the required parachute area for a given desired terminal velocity, vehicle mass and atmospheric density so that I can perform these calculations for other bodies or more exotic environments and manoeuvres (and perhaps find a way to work out the usefulness of a drogue chute in certain circumstances) without going through the laborious task of using cheats to test an as yet incomplete design, a prospect I am somewhat averse to, particularly in my career game. So far, the following forum/reddit posts and subsequent discussion have provided some information as to calculations but unfortunately they don't seem to provide any hard numbers with regard to the relationship between parachute spread in symmetry grouped radial chutes and their effectiveness. - https://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/156287-boring-maths-on-parachutes-in-12/ - https://www.reddit.com/r/KerbalAcademy/comments/7cfwab/parachute_calculations/ As I lack the needed understanding of the physics or the ability to figure out how to work out the game's calculations to figure out the formulae to perform the necessary calculations (Spread angle effect and parachute calculation). I thereby make this request for assistance in finding said information. I apologise if this is in the wrong forum as I felt it could fit into either gameplay questions or general discussion AviosAdku --- EDIT --- While performing some quick tests with RCS Build aid (thank you @luizsilveira for the suggestion of the mod), I can confirm that the spread angle is actually a factor for all parachutes and can affect individual parachutes as well as symmetry grouped ones. However I was unable to determine the exact effect of the spread angle which seemed to tail off with the higher symmetry levels (in testing with Mk2-R Radial Mount Parachutes, the cutoff where further angle had no effect was around 8 degrees with 6x symmetry and a 577t mass but around 6 degrees for 8x symmetry with the same mass). Thank you so far

A while ago I had a question that went a little like this: "Planet Kerbin has a radius of r from its center and gravity of G. Two identical rockets launch from the equator at opposite sides, and start accelerating along the rotation of the planet with the velocity of V. At what time after they finished acceleration did they reach maximum distance from each other, and what was the distance?" It also said in its prefix that "people attempting this question might want to find out a little about Kepler's laws." I think I got the answer, but I am not sure if it is right, as I didn't know any good method of doing such a calculation. Could you please help me by telling me how do you find out these variables algebraicly? I also found the only picture that I had of this question, and here is a graph that went with it

I'm looking for some help/guidance on what is turning out to be a surprisingly challenging math problem: I'm trying to find the maximum possible separation between any two given planets. I think it would be useful, or at least interesting, to know this kind of thing when constructing comms relay networks, etc. I've got some idea how to proceed, but my efforts keep coming up dry (not least because of my merely intermediate math knowledge). Seems my problem needs new eyes and new ideas. I'm all ears!

Hello fellow Kerbalnauts, I'm playing on the PS4 so sadly no mods to help me calculate things for my problem. No more So I'm constructing a massive Duna ship ( think Discovery from 2001) It is being built in a 90 orbit of Kerbin. The total dry mass of the craft is 70 tons. 55.2 m in length I'm planning on using nuclear engines to power it. My question is how much fuel do I need, to leave LKO and get to Duna ( planning launch during Duna Kerban close approach) My craft has currently 3 empty Kerbodyne 7200 1 Kerbodyne 3600 and a Rockmax X200-16, all empty. Please let me know how I achieve my goal. Cheers, Gus Grizzom

Hello kerbonauts, As a 'purist', I have never used any mods or cheatsheets and so I used to do all calculations by hand. The only way for me to use a CalculationsSheet, is to make one myself, so that's what I did. Using it for all sorts of hohmann-transfers, commsat-deployments and delta-v calculations. I know there have been other mods and sheets around for years, which can do exactly the same thing. I made my own CalculationSheets to maintain the 'purist' way of playing, but without having to do manual calculations. I have no problems at all with non-purists, it's a singleplayer game, we all can play how we want. The green fields are for input, all other cells are blocked. I hope someone else will find the sheet useful. Feel free to comment also. Free to use with this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10jiVQF0OBHQrgSCXz-bWVS0uYm7T0TlwV50zeXrdr4Y/edit?usp=sharing

Hello All, I recently learned that I'm heading back to school to do some postgraduate study and I need an excuse to revise and touch up my MATLAB skills. Simultaneously I have been grappling with the SSTO design problem and the fact that I cannot find any tools that will guide me in the design of an SSTO and payload. My thought is that while fluid dynamics was not my strong suit (I am a mechanical engineer) the simplified modelling of KSP should make this a reasonable endeavour with a bit of research. My a first step will be to produce an aircraft design tool that I will input a desired payload, ceiling and perhaps a few other parameters and the program will output required thrust, lift surface area and required coefficient of friction. In this way, the 'art' of aircraft design still exists because you have to design something within those parameter (x lift surface, y kN of thrust etc) so but at least the science gives you a starting point. Would be keen for thoughts, guidance, advice or be pointed at any existing tools. Good flying

I have been trying to find the formula that gives me the time ( or MeanAnomaly, same thing) to periapsis in a hyerbolic orbit. I spend some time searching google, wiki etc ( Totally didn't spend 6h searching...) and I found some info, but I can't figure out how to use it in code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbola http://conicsectionjpg.blogspot.si/2012/10/true-anomaly-of-hyperbola_2603.html This is my code right now: something to note is that I already have all other parameters calculated ( eccentricty, semiMajorAxis etc) If someone who knows the formulas could help me, I would Really apreciate it.

Hello! I have been wondering about manually calculating the rocket/objects/bodies statistics on paper rather than using mods. I love KER, but I am looking for a way or a style later on where I don't rely on it to design my rockets... (And maybe later if I got the time, make small plugin that only shows the required information from the rocket to take them and do the TWR, dV, burn time, etc... calculations manually). I tried to make the calculations on a sheet, but they were way off the actual numbers shown in KER. I had a rocket in KER showed 11k dV, while on my sheet it was showing 14k dV, so I was wondering what KER takes into account when calculating the numbers? The way I did it was to calculate the stages I know will be in atmosphere based on the Isp in atmosphere for the engine, then for vacuum stages, I used the Isp for vac.... Is it how KER do the calculations then takes the average or am I wrong? I am looking to get the calculations correct as I want to remove KER and just use my own calculations and to improve my math as part of my math re-learning program Also, I am looking for these equations: The set of equations to calculate launch profiles and ascent paths for rockets, also planetary transfers and windows. One other really PITA thing I have is determining the landing trajectory of an object. I use the mod Trajectories which is awesome, but again I want to do it myself... Really appreciate your feedback!