KSP for the chronically impatient

[Homusubi]

I'm at that stage with KSP where I can get to Minmus in my sleep, but haven't been able to get to other planets (apart from one very small, completely monopropellant-powered probe that got to Duna!). The problem, it appears, is timing. I simply cannot sit through a 10-15 minute burn where nothing else is going on, particularly when Kerbal seconds don't correspond to Earth seconds due to performance, leading to me not being able to go and do something else for however long it takes.

Simple question: How do I get to Jool without any burn lasting longer than five minutes? It's sandbox, so no money/mass/whatever restrictions apply. I don't even mind about not getting back to Kerbin as I usually send unkerballed probes.

[Lord Aurelius]

Unless I'm using LVNs or ions, none of my burns are longer than about 2 minutes, even for Jool transfers. I would recommend using Poodles or Rhinos for the interplanetary stage, with a TWR of around 0.5. That will still give you a substantial payload and plenty of dV without having to wait forever for the burns.

[Slam_Jones]

One option is: MOAR BOOSTERS!!!! If you don't already have something like it, mods like Kerbal Engineer and MechJeb will show you some inportant info, like delta V (basically how much you can propel your ship) and TWR (basically how quickly you can move said ship). The higher your TWR, the shorter your burns.

Another option (which I don't recommend unless your ship is 100% structurally sound) is to make use of physics warp, up to 4x. This will make your ship more likely to flex and bend while accelerating, but if your ship is stable enough, you can withstand these forces, and consequently have 1/4 as long of a burn time. Definitely quicksave and test it carefully before doing anything you can't undo.

Good luck!

[Red Iron Crown]

More thrust. Don't use nukes or ions if you're interested in shorter burns, a Skipper or Rhino will give much higher TWR and shorter burns, at the cost of more fuel.

A good Jool ejection is about 2000m/s or so, so for <5 minute burn time you need an average acceleration of 2000/300 or ~6.7m/s², or a Kerbin-relative TWR of about 0.65. Very much attainable.

[dryer_lint]

Another option (which I don't recommend unless your ship is 100% structurally sound) is to make use of physics warp, up to 4x. This will make your ship more likely to flex and bend while accelerating, but if your ship is stable enough, you can withstand these forces, and consequently have 1/4 as long of a burn time.

Physics warp can usually go up to x2 or even x3 without any problems. Hold Alt, and then warp - you'll go into physics warp as if you were in atmosphere!

Additionally, there's always the option of doing something else during long burns. Browse the KSP forums? Just make sure to quicksave first!

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More thrust. Don't use nukes or ions if you're interested in shorter burns, a Skipper or Rhino will give much higher TWR and shorter burns, at the cost of more fuel.

You guys are insane. How the heck do you get Rhinos into space!?

(Not a pun, I literally don't understand how to get those massive engines into space)

[Slam_Jones]

- snip -

You guys are insane. How the heck do you get Rhinos into space!?

(Not a pun, I literally don't understand how to get those massive engines into space)

Actually I often get Rhinos or Mammoths into space as (rocket-style launch) SSTOs... inefficient, sure, but with the right amount of fuel and a smaller payload, those babies can go forever.

My space program is weird, okay.

[nadreck]

What they said about walking away, make a sandwich, shake up a marg, water the plants, start putting clothes in the washing machine ... with the guidance unit which allows locking SAS onto the maneuver node indicator on the nav ball long burns are a snap. Sure I have messed up on the, and with something like a Joolian expedition support ship with 10 orange tanks a few landers and probes, it can be a costly mess up, but heck that is what makes it fun in hard mode on career.

[Lord Aurelius]

You guys are insane. How the heck do you get Rhinos into space!?

On top of a large rocket:).

A quick and easy way is to have a 3.75m upper stage of your rocket also be the interplanetary stage. To do this, use KER/MechJeb, and don't be afraid to build big.

Start with your payload, and put it in a 3.75m fairing. Put a large fuel tank (a single large 3.75m tank is appropriate if you're going to use it for a transfer) and a Rhino.

Place a decoupler and 3 of the large 3.75 tanks with a mammoth on the bottom. Add boosters (the 2.5m LF boosters + fuel tanks work well) so that the 1st stage can get off the ground (TWR of around 1.2 at sea level) and the core has a TWR of about 1 once the boosters run out (0.9 is fine as well). Make sure the lower part of your rocket has around 3000 dV so you won't need to light the upper stage until you're already almost in orbit.

[WOODY01]

Long burns for me are handled by MechJeb while I do some thing else like browse the KSP forum, watch something on Netflix or Hulu, cook dinner, and other things.

[Scarecrow88]

For shorter burns, don't use nukes. It's quite easy to get to Duna (and back) without having to rely on nuke engines.

[ShadowZone]

As was already said: more boosters

This was my Jool-5 mission craft, the Joolishka. It was built in 0.90 so it wouldnt work as well with 1.02 due to the heat thing. But you can see what you can get into orbit

[Col_Jessep]

For shorter burns, don't use nukes. It's quite easy to get to Duna (and back) without having to rely on nuke engines.

This. I went to Duna on 4 LV-909s yesterday.

Honestly, at this point I'm not sure what I would use the NERVA for. Too damn heavy.

[panzer1b]

Nukes are sadly slow burning unless you stack more of them then fuel. If you are not willing to burn for say 10 mins minimum to do a jool ejection, i reccomend you use the LFO powered KR-2L or the Poodle or the LV-909. Those 3 are efficvient as you can get for a LFO engine, and can provide great TWR when powering a ship designed for them. Myself i like teh KR-2L best though, as its so bloody powerful, a single one can push a 500t fuel barge to jool without going itno unbeareable long burn times. For anything below 200t though, nuke clusters all the way, and for stuff below 10t ions are an option though the lv-909 is actually decent provided you dont insist on 15K dV.

[spaceBrezel]

I shorten my burns with physical warp 4x

Press "alt + ." 3x or less if your craft is not rigid enough.

shortens 20min burns to 5min RL...

[NonWonderDog]

Made a Kerballed Mun landing using just two "Spider" engines the other day... initial Munar TWR of 0.9. I wanted to see how far I could push it, and that turned out to be just about the limit. It landed with a TWR around 1.25.

It was a 9 minute full-throttle burn from low Mun orbit to the surface, but it was high-precision and nerve-wracking enough not to be boring. So that's my recommendation for long burns, I guess. Heightened Mortal Danger. I'm not sure how generally applicable that is.

(Actually, it took something like 40 minutes factoring in all the quickloads and Kerbal death...)

More seriously, I just have two monitors. Run KSP with the "-popupwindow" command-line argument and it's perfectly happy to run on one of them in a full-screen window.

[problemecium]

Rhinos aren't that hard to get into orbit. Have a look at my standard nuclear engine cluster - it weighs 24 tons if I recall correctly:

[Homusubi]

Thanks everyone, so the general idea is "try to get Rhinos and/or Poodles into space"? Seems good enough to me. I'll try it today or tomorrow.

P.S. So one large 3.75-metre tank, powered by Rhinos or Poodles, is enough to get to Jool with starting from orbit? From escape velocity?

[NeMeSiS]

Long burns for me are handled by MechJeb while I do some thing else like browse the KSP forum, watch something on Netflix or Hulu, cook dinner, and other things.

This. You can set up the burn yourself and let Mechjeb execute it. wasd'ing a 5 minute burn isn't skill related, just tedious.

[katateochi]

If time is money....buy more boosters!! (well, not boosters, but larger engines as other have already said.) The trade off is time saved vs effort in lifting larger engines and more fuel into orbit.

Build craft to be sturdy so they can handle running at full thrust under 4x physics warp. (alt + >)

If you do need to do a long burn, use Kerbal Alarm clock to pause the game at a certain time, start the burn, set the alarm to go off a bit before the burn is supposed to finished and select the option to make it pause the game. (I don't actually do this myself but I think that should work in principle).

(You could also try RemoteTech and let it control the burn, the remote tech computer will perform a burn of the required dV or duration and then shut the engine down, but that's a more fiddly solution).

[Red Iron Crown]

P.S. So one large 3.75-metre tank, powered by Rhinos or Poodles, is enough to get to Jool with starting from orbit? From escape velocity?

A quick calculation gives 2km/s of dV from a large 3.75m tank and a Rhino pushing a 68 ton payload at a 1.28 Kerbin-relative TWR. 2km/s is about right for the ejection burn to Jool from LKO (nothing for the capture, though, that can be done by aerobraking or gravity assist. Smaller payloads will give more dV and higher TWR, of course.

[Gnawer]

Would be cool if high-level pilots could just navigate the maneuver nodes themselves. I realize that there are mods for that, but I kinda expected it to just be part of the game. It just seems natural. First you control the rocket manually, then get stability assist, then locking to various directions, then just tell the dude what to do and concentrate on high-level stuff.

I'm actually not progressed enough in my campaign to get to this issue, but sitting and watching a launch every time is already getting old. In some cases I'd much rather fast forward it, if it weren't for the bugged physics warp.

[magnemoe]

One tricks I used in 0.90 was heavy tugs, 3.75 meter tank with 9 LV-N in the back. large docking port in front and on back of interplanetary ship. It helped a lot speeding up the long burns, drop tug at edge on Kerbin SOI or then it just has a bit fuel left, return it to LKO, refuel and reuse. in 1.02 you use MK3 parts instead.

[Slam_Jones]

Would be cool if high-level pilots could just navigate the maneuver nodes themselves. I realize that there are mods for that, but I kinda expected it to just be part of the game. It just seems natural. First you control the rocket manually, then get stability assist, then locking to various directions, then just tell the dude what to do and concentrate on high-level stuff.

I'm actually not progressed enough in my campaign to get to this issue, but sitting and watching a launch every time is already getting old. In some cases I'd much rather fast forward it, if it weren't for the bugged physics warp.

Ibelieve MechJeb will be able to give you the features you're looking for. It's basically an auto-pilot, afaik (never used it myself: but to each their own!)

[Lord Aurelius]

That's exactly why I use MechJeb, I'm much more of an engineer/mission planner than a pilot and having a capable autopilot makes the game tremendously more playable for me so I don't have to tediously fly everything by hand (complete with excessive quicksaving and quickloading).

That also fits in with the thread title: if you're chronically impatient, use MechJeb, high thrust rockets and high energy transfers. I happen to like big rockets so it all fits together nicely.

[Homusubi]

A quick calculation gives 2km/s of dV from a large 3.75m tank and a Rhino pushing a 68 ton payload at a 1.28 Kerbin-relative TWR. 2km/s is about right for the ejection burn to Jool from LKO (nothing for the capture, though, that can be done by aerobraking or gravity assist. Smaller payloads will give more dV and higher TWR, of course.

Does the 68 tons include the fuel tank and engine?