Rakaydos

Was GP2 the one with the 80+ degree inclination, including the orbits of all moons? That would be an interesting challange to reach and orbit... (and return home from)

Indeed. the idea is that you need to do all (ok, 90%) of your delta V at launch and see how far you can go. Any suggestions for a better score system? No fuelless engine mods, stretchy SRBs should be fine. No max stages, but SRBs can only be in the first stage. (if someone comes up with a clever drop-tank RCS rocket that can get to Eeloo, I suppose that's fine.)

I thought the animations didt have (understandable) words? Werner von Kerman: *waves Gene urgently toward telescope!* Gene *looks* Cut to: Class E asteroid, spinning slowly Gene squabbles angrilly at Werner, Werner starts sketching out a Rocomax tank, there is a general disagrement, then he draws a larger tank Cut to pad, epic music, Jeb waving goodby... (later) Asteroid hits KSC and bounces, Jeb still attached. Gene and Werner facepalm.

Get a trajectory that just barely exits Kerbin's SoI, then turn off your batteries to save power. When you exit you will have almost no velocity relative to kerbin, so you can do science, turn your batteries back on, and burn straight back to the blue dot until you get a kerbin SoI encounter.

Use a laser to ablate the cometary material, altering the comet's course to an easier to reach one.

Carear mode, Space Plane Hanger only, Ferram installed, no fairings. Currently I can land on minmus and Mun, and am working my way up the tech tree with that design. I might need the ARM joint reinforement to try and launch a larger, interstellar vehical, though I'm going to try my existing design docked together as a fake-asparagus.

In the US, my father has a licence to mix custom model rocket engines... and an affidavit from the Department of Homeland Security that he is a rational person. As for Equdor, you also have to consider that the cost of building a space center, effectively on Mt Everest's brother, may be outside the budget of a tiny south american nation. However, if the ground logistics could be worked out, it would be the ideal place to launch equatoial and ecliptic based misions.

Actually, I'd be more worries about an asteroid miner being hit with anti-monopoly laws. Never mind that they're intended to lower consumer prices by competition, the price difference will effectively MAKE it a monopoly, which has legal implications.

This is a challange to see how far from Kerbin/Kerbol you can get with the following restrictions: No Oxidiser, no Xenon. All solid fuel must be part of the first stage. RCS is allowed for course corrections and slingshot-type maneuvering. My current record is just short of Duna orbit- unfortunately, I had a bad inclination problem coming out of the atmo, and I burnt a lot of RCS trying to compensate- otherwise, I might have been able to get a slingshot in a few orbits. Leaderboard: Rakaydos: 19,394,535,910 Km (short of Duna)

How much does a 9.8 m/s^2 gravity at ASL, 600 KM from pointsource (center of kerbin) degrade over a mere 70 km? Doing a little Zeno based approximaton here, if ths is even really a thing... Gravity is halved at ASL+600km Gravity is 3/4 at +300km Gravity is 7/8 at +150km Gravity is 15/16 at +75km 9.8 * 15/16 = 9.185 m/s^2 at 75 km

Does the magic have mass? I know the foil does...

Hmm. It seems like there would be an ideal maximun DeltaV Ion stage, an ideal NERVA stage to get it moving, and an ideal turbojet stage to get it into orbit.

I don know about space, but any launch through aircraft cruising altitudes needs to let the FAA know. I used to participate with a group that would launch large solid fuel "model" rockets from a nevada desert, and not only did the FAA have to know, we were not allowed to launch when any aircraft was visible above the horizon.

You have to stop and realize what terminal velocity IS. In a fall through the atmosphere, without thrust, there are two forces- gravity and drag. If you are falling faster than terminal velocity (say in reentry) air resistance is greater than the force of gravity and you slow down. If you are moving slower than terminal velocity (small rocket at apogee), gravity is stronger than air resistance and you speed up. A launch runs into the same factors. At any given altitude, the force of gravity will be matched by the force of air resistance at terminal velocity. Go faster, and the drag goes up exponentially (it's squared, IIRC), and go slower to lose more time to gravity drag.

Voyager was launched from a Titan 3 balistic missile. While I may be a bit loose on the math, I suspect voyager's "grand tour" slingshots did allow quite a bit of delta V, with the perfect arrangeent of planets.

Lithobreak against a class E to save fuel.

That's supposed to be stock in the ARM patch. Can it wait a week?

The videos have demonstrated a fairly impressive impact tolerance on the asteroids. A deliberate lithobreaking to match velocity, then after matching velocity to turn the claw on it and SCIENCE!, might be a good way to get asteroid science easilly.

Going to double check really quick, but I believe "Refined science" is over and above the normal maximum. So if you transmit refined science and return the normal science, you can get over 100% of the normal science.

The maximum possible science, even now, depends on how early you unlock the science lab and how often you use it.

The first draft of the space shuttle used titanium intsead of thermal tiles. Then congress told them to economise, and the ended up with the dumb foamed glass protection that killed two different shuttles. Do it right, use tungstin and titanium to protect your hull.

I got a jet powered probe to kerbin escape velocity without any other engines.

So, my jet powered probe achieved kerbin escape from kerbin atmosphere, before my ion engines even kicked in. If I hadnt burned all my jet fuel, I totally should have gone for a 5 ton landing on laythe

I'm gonna wait for the ARM patch's ion buff. I'm hoping to make a craft tat can reach orbit from Ion and RCS alone.

You can probably manage that in a single launch, with a set of docked "wheelman" probes- Claw, Probecore, call it 3 reaction wheels (12 overall, with 4x symetry- should hopefully be enough for an E class asteroid), enough RTGs to power them and RCS to maneuver into position attached to the sides, and a docking port to attack to the "main" craft during the trip out.