cantab

That looks spectacular. One of the coolest designs in the thread.

I don't know if it even does affect the processing power much. The joint and deformation calculations still need running. Ditching the drag force, more so than the mass, may be the bigger benefit. And yes, we know from mod parts that the game can handle a mass of 0. Parts that are to remain physicless - which should be limited to "glue" parts like the cubic octagonal strut - should have a mass of 0 listed.

Looks sensible enough. A few changes I'd make if it were me: Put an antenna on the core, since that's where the science lab is. Just the low-gain one will do, I can add med- and high-gain on future modules. Drop that funny double adapter from the power hub, it's a waste of two parts. (But then, my PC sucks so I really have to watch the part count to avoid the lag). Not put that many docking ports on the fuel hub. Again, just part count. Test my lighting on the docking ring on the ground. It's very easy to over-light things, which gives you a saturated view that you can't see the details in. Put just two engines on the tug. That'll be enough for shifting stuff around in kerbin orbit, unless it's absolutely huge or you need to do something silly like completely reverse an orbit. It shouldn't need so many battries either. I'd also be concerned about the exhaust when pulling a cargo; the angled engines may be an effort to deal with that, but more reliable is to put the rear docking port much further behind the engines. Put the second docking port on the drop tank, in case you want to refuel through it or double-stack them.

Yesterday I completed the rendezvous and setup of my asteroid tug, the Macbeth 1. It went from this: to this: Let's hope it handles well when I start pushing the thing around!

There are some rules about what type of craft the game assigns automatically, depending on what parts are on it. I don't know them all, but having a lander can makes it a lander, and the external command seat seems to make it a rover. It may still be that nothing makes it automatically a station or a base.

Nice work. I think it's going to be some time before I attempt an Eve lander.

Sounds interesting. Subject to a successful Kethane install that doesn't slow down my KSP too much, I'm in.

It's a good idea to have a probe core ss part of the "core" of the station, ensuring it will not become debris. If you let it run out of electricity you'll lose control, but you can always fix that by docking a power supply to it.

Hundreds of thousands of people have bought KSP and set about building craft for all manner of missions. But what about the untapped potential of our craft, the things they were never meant to do? What new feats can be achieved with old ships? That's what this Challenge is for, to use spacecraft In ways for which they were never intended. It's pretty simple, and there's not really any scoring as such. Just take a craft that someone else has built, and use it for a different mission. Meanwhile submit a craft of your own to keep things going and give people some options. Challenge entry rules: Succeed or fail, submit a mission report covering what you set out to do and how it went. It must not be the intended mission of the craft! You don't have to submit your own craft, but it's encouraged. The allowed modifications to the Challenge Craft (CC) are limited. You may: Add informational or autopilot parts that do not affect the CC's performance, such as MechJeb. Change staging, action groups, and stock tweakables. Put the CC on your own launcher, if and only if it doesn't come with one. The launcher may get the CC to low Kerbin orbit, no more. Refuel the CC using your own craft or infrastructure. Use more than one of the CC. Use the CC in modded environments such as FAR or Alternis Kerbol. Challenge Craft submission rules: First up, only submit a craft if you intend on entering the challenge (ie flying someone else's craft) as well. Also, one CC submission per person. You must provide the following: The craft file. Dur. ONE image embedded in the page. You may link to more. The part count, and whether the craft is provided with or without a launcher. A description of the intended mission or purpose of the craft. Craft requirements: Stock parts only. The CC may be built with a modded environment in mind, but may not have any mod parts. The craft must have done its intended mission. No untested stuff. Don't be stupid. No submitting just a command pod, no submitting something that disintegrates on physics loading, you get the idea. And no making the intended mission amount to "Do Anything and Everything" either. Sensible part counts please. No Kraken drives. They're too finicky. My Challenge Craft submission To get the ball rolling here. Chamberlain.craft 103 parts, includes launcher. The Chamberlain is a "space bus", built to ferry four passengers and up to two tons of cargo (with more possible if it's put on a bigger launcher or partly empties its own fuel tanks) to and between craft in Kerbin orbit. It has loads of delta-V so that it can ferry passengers between ships with radically different orbits, not merely bog-standard equatorial LKO. Landing is of the passenger space only, with a controlled glide to allow selection of site before a final parachute descent. The craft file supplied has a couple of science packages for cargo, instead of the empty fuel tanks in the picture. Action Groups: 1 - SCIENCE! 3 - Toggle solar panels and antenna. 5 - Toggle Chamberlain main engine (the LV-909). Be careful with your gravity turn, it likes to flip over!

There has been a bug reported where craft vibrate themselves to destruction with no specific cause, especially with stuff clawed to asteroids I believe. If you're experiencing the shaking getting worse even after you've shut down engines and SAS, that may be the problem. The resolution is to completely close and restart KSP, though even that may not cure a ship that has already picked up the issue.

This guide covers the basics of orbital rendezvous http://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/Basic_maneuvers#Docking_.2F_Rendezvous For meeting with LKO space stations, I tend to: Launch into orbit as normal, no worries about timing. Adjust so my orbit is tangent to the station's somewhere. (I set manouevre nodes for all my orbit changes.) Burn prograde at that tangent point, making my orbital period longer, so my next intercept is as small a distance as possible. Make a correction at apoapsis to further reduce my intercept distance. Switch the navball to target mode. On approaching the intercept, burn target retrograde to match velocities and thus orbit. Make the final approach as described in that guide.

IIRC the ecliptic and the galactic plane line up in the Kerbol system. So they might call it something like the Sun River.

It doesn't work quite like that, unfortunately. The transmission limit is basically a cap. So no matter how many goo canisters you run and transmit, you'll never get more than 30% of the science you could from returning a bunch of goo canister results. The lab increases the cap, by I believe 15 percentage points for the goo, but it's still a hard limit with the only way to get the rest being to return it.

The two major problems I see with your original design: Your second stage engines (the five Skippers at the bottom, first staging being your SRBs) are way underfuelled, as is partly evidenced by the 2.6 TWR you mentioned having after dropping the SRBs. Your third stage engine is nonfunctional because the decoupler blocks fuel flow. The upshot of both is that you don't have anywhere near the punch to reach orbit. If you're OK with using some of the fuel in the station for the ascent, then you can do this quite simply. Put a Skipper right on the bottom of your station with a decoupler below. That will be your second stage. Below that put a Rockomax 16 tank, Rockomax 32 tank, and Skipper, then radially attach four more like that. You don't need decouplers for that radial attachment since all five engines are going to burn together. Job done. Add boosters if you like, or use 6-fold rather than 4-fold symmetry for the first stage, you won't need them but they'll let you keep a bit more fuel in your station once it's up there. If you have trouble placing the parts just try a few times, it can be a little finicky, or use the 70 decouplers to get some spacing. Design by cantab314, on Flickr In orbit and still plenty of fuel on board by cantab314, on Flickr (I suggest adding some reaction wheels or fins, the control on this was a little iffy.) If you want to get the station up there with its own tanks full, you've got a much tougher task considering you haven't unlocked the LFB and Mainsail. A first stage of lots of boosters, a second stage similar to the first stage of the above but maybe with 7 stacks, and a third stage of a single Skipper and a Rockomax 32 might do it. A few other minor points. A cupola up top can make the rocket unstable on ascent, though if you want it on your station there's not much you can do. You have a lot of monopropellant (RCS fuel); unless you plan on refueling RCS-intensive ships or making big orbital changes for the station on the RCS I'd at least take off one of the big tanks. And the hydraulic detachment manifolds are heavy, try and avoid using them unless you need their extra force.

I regularly see "phantom" orbits popping up when going through SOI changes - though I've never seen one quite that weird. Try just sticking with it, staying at 1x warp, and with any luck after a minute or two it will return to showing your correct orbit.

Jeb, Bob, and Bill taking a break after completing the primary mission of the Tycho 1, which made the first asteroid landing/rendezvous of my space program. Hanging out at 1 Jebediah by cantab314, on Flickr

I don't know about a theoretical calculation, but empirically you could look at the results from the cheap science challenge, http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/74271-Optimally-Efficient-Science-Mission-Challenge. So far it seems the manned missions are winning out. Crew and EVA reports are good science for low cost, and a Mk-1 Pod isn't that heavy. Then again my unmanned mission isn't yet finished. Of course it's all rather influenced by the current screwy part costs.

I just make them jump off the rocket Though they did clonk a solar panel one time I did that.

I run Alexmoon's planner and input what it tells me into Precise Node. Then I play with it a little to adjust things: periapsis nice and low for an insertion, or appropriate change to the orbit for a flyby. For asteroids my approach is a bit different. I've found that aiming to leave Kerbin's SOI in the same direction as the asteroid is predicted to enter it works well. Usually I'll do an initial ejection burn, for which the magnitude isn't too critical, a bigger ejection burn simply gets me an earlier encounter. Then I'll make a normal burn somewhere between the Mun and Minmus's orbit. Of course if I'd thought ahead I'd just have launched into the right inclination to start with. To be honest, I'm not sure how efficient this is, it seems somewhat delta-V hungry, but my thinking is that if I just want to deflect the asteroid then the earlier I get to it the less I need to push it by. Edit: Make that seems really delta-V hungry. I'm finding I've got a nearly 2000 m/s burn to match speeds with the asteroid on one mission now Depending on the ship I may or may not need to make a later correction. Little probes are easy to get right first time. Big asteroid tugs, not so much.

You can do as good as, by linking your CSM and LM with a decoupler, and rendezvousing but not docking the ascent stage to the CSM after the landing. You need to transfer the crew by EVA anyway at the moment.

The original picture looks like it might be "Mode 4", which I don't think anyone understands.

Xona-, or anything else beyond yotta-/yocto-, is an unofficial prefix anyway. It may have been used by Squad, but it's not a "real" SI prefix.

An idea for a workaround: Disable everything - RCS, torque, engines - on the target ship. The camera may make it awkward though.

There's a great long flat area on Kerbin just north of the launchpad More seriously, on the Mun I recall landing on one of the nearside's maria and finding it impressively flat. Can't remember exactly where though.

This is why unmanned tests are useful. And you will get your stranded Kerbal back one day.