900 tons, 37 Kerbals, 60K LFO, 20 Nuclear engines and I can't leave Kerbin!

[workerbee]

So yeah. I built this massive ship in orbit (EDIT: pic is mid-build: http://imgur.com/ttErZ7B)...pretty epic and it has all the trimmings. Anyway, I have this sucker loaded up with all kinds of missions for when I get to Jool (landers, sats, station core, etc) but I am having a hard time escaping Kerbin and calculating when and where to start such a long burn. Mechjeb says it will be a 27 minute burn, and it has me starting so far behind prograde that of course my peri drops below the deck...I am currently trying to do multiple smaller burns at prograde to slowly increase apoasis but my new Mechjeb calculations have my DV for the jump increasing to nearly 3,000 or more! This ship is such a pain to turn! Does anyone have excessively large ship transit experience and can offer me some helpful trinkets of advice so that Jeb and his crew can complete mission(s) on Jool? Thanks, Kerbalnauts, happy Betamas!

Edited December 16, 2014 by workerbee

[Empiro]

The good news is that you got the right idea on how to do long burns like this. However, what you can't do is split the maneuver node across orbits. You'll need to do a 7 minute burn, cancel the maneuver node, and create a new maneuver node, then do another 7 minute burn, and keep going until you're done. Maybe some of the other folks here have a trick they like to use, but doing this this way has always worked OK for me.

[workerbee]

Thanks, Empiro, that's actually exactly what I am doing...I figured out pretty quickly that if I orbit again with the same node, the DV calculations increase. So to "trick" it, you have to cancel and create nodes every time you come around for a burn. Fairly time consuming but if you just alt-tab it's not so bad

[Empiro]

Well good luck with all that. Looking at your craft, one thing to make sure is that your engine exhaust isn't hitting other parts of your craft. Press f3 and check the logs to make sure. One other piece of useful advice is to turn off gimbals for the engines in front of the center of mass.

[Pondafarr]

start from a higher orbit, say 600km or so. that will prevent you from entering atmo during your burn

[workerbee]

Well good luck with all that. Looking at your craft, one thing to make sure is that your engine exhaust isn't hitting other parts of your craft. Press f3 and check the logs to make sure. One other piece of useful advice is to turn off gimbals for the engines in front of the center of mass.

Thanks for the gimbal advice, I always forget about those. And yes I will check the logs, much appreciated, brother!

Ponda...won't I then lose advantage of the Oberth?