Claw

Yes, the simplified delta V maps has times on it. They aren't exact though and are (as LethalDose pointed out) based on the transfer used to get there. It might be useful enough for your purpose, depending on how much precision you want.

I do like airbus said and use a mod to show me the TWR. I prefer MechJeb because of the layout, but you can use either MJ or KER. I use it to basically eyeball the throttle setting based off of the TWR. So if MJ says my craft currently has a TWR of 2.0ish, then about half way on the throttle gives me a TWR of 1 for hovering. If I've overbuilt the engine and it has a high TWR, then I'll manually dial down the thrust limiter on the right-click tweakable menu. MJ automatically adjusts the TWR reading to match whatever you set for the tweakable. So in this way you could also use the tweakable/MJ combo to always give you some comfortable TWR range on the throttle that is the same for each craft. If you always like a maximum TWR of 2.0, you can sort of set that in and work at the midrange of the throttle. I would be careful about setting it so that max throttle is near 1.0 TWR because that doesn't leave you any room to recover if you're coming in too fast.

You'll also have to right click on it to get out.

This is all assuming you're using stock aerodynamics. Some of it also applies to FAR, but there are some more considerations when using FAR. Key "rules" (or "must do") I would say is... - The pink Center of Thrust (CoT) should be inline (or very close to it) with your yellow Center of Mass (CoM). - The blue Center of Lift (CoL) should be slightly above and a bit behind the CoM marker for general stability. You can stray from these, but you probably need some experience before you try to bend these rules too far. Most other things are up to your design taste. However, I find the following guidelines are a good "rule of thumb" in general for initial designing. - Engines: 1 TurboJet per 12 tons- Maximum of 15 tons per TurboJet (even at that, it gets difficult and you need to airhog.) - Intakes: 3 Ram intakes per TurboJet - Minimum of 1 per TurboJet. Beyond 3 intakes, you need to start doubling them to see much effect. - Fuel: Around 150 unts per TurboJet (or roughly 1 Mk-1 fuselage worth of fuel per TurboJet) - Minimum of usually 100 units per TurboJet. - Wings: 0.5-1.0 lift rating per ton - Maximum of 1.0 lift rating per ton. Minimum is a bit misleading because you can build VTOL with 0 lift rating, but generally no less than 0.5 for standard space planes. Less is better if you're going far with it. Those aren't perfect, and as you get better at design and flying you can stretch them a bit. Generally speaking, if you increase one area you can decrease another. So if you have 8 tons and 1 TurboJet, you can probably get away with fewer intakes, less fuel, or less wing. And they fit well with my typical ascent profile (which must also be tailored slightly depending on the craft itself). Altitude - Airspeed 10 km - 200 m/s 15 km - 350 m/s 20 km - 650 m/s 24 km - 1000 m/s 30 km - 1600 m/s Flight stability takes a bit more art than science, but you need to ensure you have enough pitch, roll, and yaw authority for your craft to do what you want. So it's a good idea to have a design goal in mind when you start, then work your way out from there. Because you can and you want to. It's virtually like anything else in this game. What good is a space station, or why would I bother sending a probe when a kerballed mission is way more profitable for science? It seems space planes are much less explored than rockets simply because the design challenges are different. So it's really up to what your goals are in game and what you enjoy doing. I personally enjoy them and have spent way more time on air/space planes than rockets. Some people enjoy the challenge of building a plane capable of delivering 100t into orbit and back. Some people absolutely hate it or are just unsure how, so they choose to stay away. The flip side is that if/when budgets are introduced there will probably be a group of people who are upset because they will feel "forced" into building planes.

PhysicsSignificance = 1 makes a part "Physicsless" Making a part "Physicsless" changes how the game looks at the part during certain calculations, in addition to simply ignoring the mass. For the decoupler, it caused problems because the decoupler would sometimes disappear, or unlink from objects it just decoupled. This caused all kinds of problems in the background of the programming which often leads to crashing or other strange behavior. So doing that fix posted above actually turns the physics back ON for the part and fixes the confusion for the program.

If it's just simply the ships/VAB directory in your save, you can make a new folder manually. If its the KSP/Ships/VAB folder, you can also manually create an empty one. No need to download it unless you really want the stock sample craft.

Exit out to the main KSC scene and try again. It won't let you reload in the VAB or SPH.

That's the beauty of this game. There are so many ways to play and so many ways to decide how to get your goals done.

You can also spit the maneuver into multiple parts by doing one burn at your PE to get into an elliptical orbit. Do another lap around that elliptical orbit, and when you are back at PE do another burn to actually eject from the SOI. You might need to do a third burn after that to set up your transfer with the interplanetary approach that you want. Splitting it this way allows you to harness more Oberth effect. I'm not sure if that's what you saw previously, but that would be one major advantage to splitting up the burn for a low TWR craft. Here's a video that demonstrates what I'm talking about (and includes some discussion about gravity assists which is irrelevant to your question). In this case, using multiple burns saved about 7% on the fuel requirement.

You are very welcome. I'm glad it worked.

If you are using the new decoupler, it's possible you're running into the physics bug (especially if there are struts involved). If so, here's how you can fix. New Decoupler (TR-38-D) causes crash when staging (linux/mac) or parts of the ship to follow around (windows) – [FIX] When staging, the new decoupler (TR-38-D) causes a variety of problems depending on your operating system. This problem seems to be worse if struts are involved. Thanks to Kasuha, the problem was narrowed down to the physics of the decoupler and is easily fixed. 1) With a text editor (such as notepad) open up the part.cfg file for the TR-38-D. It should be located in KSP\GameData\NASAmission\Parts\Size3Decoupler\part .cfg 2) Find the line that says “PhysicsSignificance = 1†and change it to “PhysicsSignificance = 0†3) Save the file and restart KSP.

I keep rereading and thinking about your question, but this part keeps throwing me off. It's unclear to me exactly what you mean by stopping all equatorial orbital velocity, then do a sub-orbital hop. If you were to stop all equatorial orbital velocity without doing anything else, then you would fall out of orbit. Now your dV expenditure would include fighting gravity while setting up your sub-orbital. I would say generally you're better off getting the inclination change out of the way as early as possible (and when you are traveling as slow as possible). What does that mean? - If you know before establishing an orbit that you're going to the pole (and have no reason to be equatorial) then go straight into a polar orbit. This can be done straight from launch (off of any body), or well before you get to the SOI change. (As others have said.) - If you're already in orbit, do the inclination change at as high of an AP as you can afford. If you're just barely capturing into a highly elliptical orbit, then keep the orbit elliptical. Do the plane change out at AP, then circularize. If you're already equatorial, then it's going to be expensive to go polar. The most efficient is like you said, to raise the AP, change inclination, then lower the AP. You can burn to a sub-orbital polar landing by burning mostly retrograde, but also slightly north (or south). This effectively kills your equatorial velocity while establishing a polar sub-orbit. That would be more efficient than simply doing the entire plane change 90 degrees, then dropping your PE. But it's also probably a bit more tricky to manage.

You are correct sir, but I didn't want to muddle my opinion with all the reasoning behind it. My preference is to risk launchig a bit late, because the only penalty is waiting. If I go early, the penalty is waiting, expending extra dV, having to flip my ship around two extra times, and other rendezvous complications. (Hence the "crummy choices.") It's not always a big deal, but I find it's easier to not deal with the extra hassel if I don't have to. (Especially when docking huge parts.)

Yeah, sometimes I even wait till the target ship is right overhead or just a bit past to be safe. In my opinion, it's better to undershoot and take a half orbit to catch up, than to overshoot and wait forever because you are slightly ahead. You'll end up with the worst case timing if you are slightly ahead and end up having to make crummy choices to fix it. But like Dkmdlb said, it'll depend on your ships capabilities and the target's parameters.

Oh dear goodness. If you would have said struts earlier I could have almost guaranteed the decouplers were at fault. Glad you got it fixed!

I just did a 6x version of what I think you're talking about. That's all I could fit around a 14400 core. Seemed to work fine...

Regardless, as you're trying to clarify. There are some bugs with the new decoupler and you might be running into it with your obscenely large setup. It's a known bug but there's a fix. Maybe this is causing the problem. New Decoupler (TR-38-D) causes crash when staging (linux/mac) or parts of the ship to follow around (windows) – [FIX] When staging, the new decoupler (TR-38-D) causes a variety of problems depending on your operating system. This problem seems to be worse if struts are involved. Thanks to Kasuha, the problem was narrowed down to the physics of the decoupler and is easily fixed. 1) With a text editor (such as notepad) open up the part.cfg file for the TR-38-D. It should be located in KSP\GameData\NASAmission\Parts\Size3Decoupler\part .cfg 2) Find the line that says “PhysicsSignificance = 1†and change it to “PhysicsSignificance = 0†3) Save the file and restart KSP.

I understand what you are saying the problem is, but what I don't understand is how you attached the 8 engine clusters to the single tank. Are they clipped together on the bottom or did you attach 8x 14400 around the outside of the core 14400? Well, not that I said that out loud I realize that I didn't ask it right either. What is the core of your rocket? How is it that you're getting out to 8x 14400s with the KS-25x4s on bottom?

Random Tank is on the right track. Whichever jet engine is placed last during building will be the first to flame out. When placing via symmetry, the mirrored part is considered "last" and will flame out first. His tips about watching the aircraft nose are also good. In addition to watching the plane, you can also watch the trim indicators in the bottom left corner. When you see the yaw trim start to push out to one side, then it's time to throttle back some. MechJeb does have an auto throttle. You won't get maximum performance out of your engines if you use it, but it will prevent asymmetric flameout.

I think I have nearly the exact same setup, except I included mass and don't have "expended dV." I also put the "+ all stages deltaV" into it's own window, for when I get those massive ships I can keep the windows split so it doesn't cover as much. Personally I do like having the dV info available. It's not really an efficiency thing more than being able to look at dV left for the stage in conjunction with TWR.

You are quite welcome. Good luck on your travels!

Hi! And welcome to the forums. Yes, but you have to build it. That's also the nice thing though, is that you get to build it! You can flip over a decoupler (using WASD keys) and attach it to the top. Then build what you need from there. As has been said, you can disable but not remove it. There are mods out there that include pods without torque modules. Some historical capsules used torque, but the units in KSP are quite strong. They simply don't in stock. It mostly has to do with how they attach. You also cannot do this automatically in stock. You have to eyeball the height when placing asymmetric parts. You can't exclude them from the staging list, but you can move them. Click once on the icon of the part in the staging list and it should turn green. When it is green, click and hold, then drag to the stage you want that part to activate in. You can add new stages by clicking on the little plus sign that pops up. You can also move an entire stage up or down by clicking and dragging the top part of the stage tab. This question really depends on what you are trying to doo. There are too many scenarios for me to label one spot as "the best." Generally if you are simply moving your orbit higher/lower, then do those changes at the AP/PE tags.

Sorry, that was more of a typo. I didn't mean to imply "right click and disable." Just to turn it off (press 'T') like Crown said.

I recently built a small (60t) space station assembeled via a series of regular and jr docking ports. I know there are more than four connections, but I'm not sure if there are more than four of each kind. (I'm also at work, and KSP isn't...) I didn't have any problems with those, but I was in orbit. I was working on tracking down another Sr problem. I was using rovers on Kerbin and noticed that I had to be exceptionally close on the height and angle to get them to click together. In most cases, I had to hack gravity for just a second for them to have enough wiggle to stick. I wonder if reloading physics is just enough to knock the port loose, causing to to become debris and get deleted. If it happens again, check the ALT-F12 debug log and see if it says why the parts were removed (and maybe make a copy of the log file). Like I said, there seems to be a rash of docking problems. Perhaps also post a pic and what mods you are using (if any) to help narrow down the cause.

I don't know how much kethane mining eats electricity, but with landers you generally want to disable the SAS module if you're not moving around. Often times the SAS will rapidly drain your batteries since the torque rings stay active and tries to fight the slope of the terrain.