.17 Planet information

[_Aramchek_]

Jet engines do in fact work on Laythe, and provide thrust.

You can fly a plane there, but only up to around 6km altitude. I will provide pics as soon as I land.

[A Fat Pokemon]

Jet engines do in fact work on Laythe, and provide thrust.

You can fly a plane there, but only up to around 6km altitude. I will provide pics as soon as I land.

Okay good When I had tested it, I simply looked for the efficiency rising before I ejected them. Actually watching for a change in my velocity never occured to me

[Lunar]

I got to eve not to long ago but before arriving i decided to land on gilly and it took me hours to land followed by a space walk which than took me hours to get back to the ship since the gravity is practically non existant

[_Aramchek_]

Well, I couldn't land it, mostly because finding a suitable spot to land was taking faaar too much fuel and time, luckily the capsule was ejected and parachuted safely to the ground.

So now Jeb has company on Laythe.

Here are some pics.

Here is the ship on it's way.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot283.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot290.png

No turning back now.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot411.png

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot412.png

Skimming along a mountain.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot421.png

And another mountain.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot448.png

Got tired of trying to land, had made a huge turn, miscalculated how close the ground was and bailed.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/80346/screenshot451.png

Flying on Laythe is fun, the atmosphere seems "thicker" and you can do some maneuvers that won't work on Kerbin, but many of the mountains are right at the limit of the altitue you can achieve...there aren't any good spots to land either.

[A Fat Pokemon]

I got to eve not to long ago but before arriving i decided to land on gilly and it took me hours to land followed by a space walk which than took me hours to get back to the ship since the gravity is practically non existant

I think im going to drop a stock rover down on gilly, it would for sure be easy to travel around there, maybe look for some easter eggs

[NovaSilisko]

What's all this talk of atmosphere layers? The atmosphere is a logarithmic increase in density as you go lower, there's no "layers"...

[A Fat Pokemon]

What's all this talk of atmosphere layers? The atmosphere is a logarithmic increase in density as you go lower, there's no "layers"...

On the atmosphere bar, the point where you enter a different "shade," the black, dark blue, light blue I think I might just change it around a bit, as I now see what the problem with that is

Edited September 25, 2012 by A Fat Pokemon

[glasstabels2]

Woah woah woah... Tylo has a surface gravity amount of 7.85?! Is that right?

I mean I kinda expected Laythe to, and I suppose Tylo isn't a whole lot smaller, but it seems weird for them to be exactly the same, as well as the float point gravity of Jool...

I kinda expected Tylo to have gravity more along the lines of Duna, maybe a bit more. Honestly, if it's that high... why wouldn't it have some atmosphere? I mean I know that a poor magnetosphere has some to do with it as well (especially when closer to the sun and the solar winds are higher), but it isn't close to the sun, and has more than twice the surface gravity of Mars (and Duna), and Mars is closer as well as has an awful magnetosphere.

Something doesn't seem right to me about Tylo having that high a surface gravity...

[maltesh]

Tylo's larger than both Laythe (500km radius) and Duna (320 km radius). It has the same radius as Kerbin (600km) , though it's a bit less massive.

As far as having nearly the same surface gravity, I expect the gravitational parameter, and thus mass, were chosen to specifically produce planets with 0.8 gees of surface gravity at the decided radii.

Ultimately, the only thing in the Kerbal star system that has characteristics reasonable for a real-world celestial body (assuming the standard value for the Newtonian Gravitational Constant) is Jool, if you politely ignore the gas giant thing.

[Nadrek]

Celestial Body information updated - now includes Kerbol, Kerbin G's at sea level, atmosphere limits, and a few other values. All information pulled directly out of the interface via Mechjeb Autom8, with thanks to the KSP team for the addon interface and the Mechjeb team for the Autom8 interface.

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/19573-Get-Celestial-Body-Orbital-%28etc-%29-Elements-from-KSP-itself?p=277387&viewfull=1#post277387

[Apotheosist]

Perhaps we should include the aproximate delta-v required to acheive orbit from the celestial bodies? For example, it takes around 11,500 m/s delta-v to acheive a 100km orbit from Eve's surface.

[Nadrek]

Approximate delta-V on what trajectory, with what approximate TWR's? On what flight path?

[Apotheosist]

Approximate delta-V on what trajectory, with what approximate TWR's? On what flight path?

For me, my craft had 7 stages, each stage had a thrust to weight at the start of about 1.5. My flightpath was straight up until first atmospheric colour change, then turn 45 degrees. Continue at this angle until the second atmospheric colour change, then turn 90 dgerees (horizontal). Keep burning until apoapsis reaches 100km, and circularize at this altitude. This is my "universal flightplan", which i use for any planet and seems to work well for crafts with TWR's between 1.5 and 2, which is the around the most efficient TWR.

[A Fat Pokemon]

Perhaps we should include the aproximate delta-v required to acheive orbit from the celestial bodies? For example, it takes around 11,500 m/s delta-v to acheive a 100km orbit from Eve's surface.

I think I'll try to add this in, though it does vary, so I'll see what I can come up with

[Nadrek]

I'd have to say that a Mechjeb profile is at least repeatable and if the rocket is stable, consistent.

[Nadrek]

What's all this talk of atmosphere layers? The atmosphere is a logarithmic increase in density as you go lower, there's no "layers"...

Do you have the equation for that handy, based on the data in the CelestialBody class?

[nhnifong]

Kosmo-Not and I are currently the main contributors to the Duna page on the wiki. We added most of the information about its orbit and other gravitational characteristics.

--EDIT-- (to clarify)

So most of the information I can add about Duna is there.

I can't seem to use the wiki lately. All of the planet pages are missing and 99% of the pages are spam. All the recent changes are new spam users.

EDIT nevermind I was looking at the wrong wiki. No wonder it was abandoned.

Edited September 26, 2012 by nhnifong

[A Fat Pokemon]

I'd have to say that a Mechjeb profile is at least repeatable and if the rocket is stable, consistent.

I'll consider using mechjeb for this, just this once

[Lazurkri]

I'll consider using mechjeb for this, just this once

Be careful when using Mechjeb to land on Duna... it keeps firing my landers engines WAYYYYY too damned late.

[Crash]

Does anyone know of a way to calculate the Delta V needed to reach a set orbit above a planet. I ask because I'd like to know for designing landers with just enough fuel for a landing and ascent.

I've searched and searched but all the available equations aren't related to this problem.

Thanks guys

[Avidday04]

This information has been so useful and saved me a lot of trial and error. Thanks for posting it!!

[Vanamonde]

Some tidbits I've gathered:

Without using the engines at all, 4 large chutes were enough to bring this lander down safely on Duna, though just barely and I plan to add another chute or two before taking my next mission there.

Edit: It appears this was largely dumb luck. It's harder than I thought even with a 5th chute, and my next 4 attempts crashed. A little last-minute nudge with RCS or engines seems to be a good idea after all.

The RCS pack will just barely get you airborne on Duna, but you drop like a stone as soon as you stop thrusting.

As I approached Moho, I noticed that my nuclear engine bell began heat-glowing at 30,000m, even though it was off. Yikes! While orbiting at 25,000m, it seemed to be gradually getting hotter, so it seems 30k is the lower limit of a safe, sustainable orbit. Of course I tried to descend anyway (after saving), and the engine blew up at around 14,000m on full thrust.

Kerbals can walk on Eve. (An earlier post said they fell and couldn't get up, but they can at least walk.)

Edited October 2, 2012 by Vanamonde

[Vanamonde]

Who runs the wiki? Could somebody add surface-to-orbit delta-Vs for the various worlds? I don't want to fly my 80 part lander to Eve just to SEE if it can get off Eve again!

[AmpsterMan]

So I have a question. Seeing as Duna has 1/5 the atmosphere at sea level (sand level?) according to this Would it be safe to assume that one would need 5 times as many parachutes to stop a given mass on Duna as they would on Kerbin?

[Moltove]

you will need more parachutes, but as the gravitational forces on Duna are less then Kerbin, you wont need 5x as many, more like 2-3