cantab

I suspect it's heavy because it's tough. You can slam into the ground at 45 m/s and survive. True, the Mk3 cockpit or 3 Mk2 cockpits would be lighter and comparably durable, but they'll look downright ugly on most rockets, and the Mk1-2 command pod does have more torque.

Going to space wasn't the problem, my Mun gravity assist for Minmus close flyby went great. Getting back wasn't a problem either. No, the fail was clicking the antenna and choosing "Transmit Data" thinking it would just finish the transmission that got stopped earlier. Instead it tried to transmit all my EVA reports and failed due to lack of electricity, thus tossing most of the mission's science into the bit bucket.

Aborted a launch due to a staging error. The abort on this rocket simple shuts down the second stage and fires off the third, so I decided to shoot for Insular Airfield. I overshot, no big deal I thought, just a quick swim right. Right? 7 km over sea wasn't quick, but it was at least simple. Crossing the island itself was another matter, I kept randomly "crashing into Kerbin" and exploding. Lots of quicksave was needed. I made it, but have vowed never again for long EVAs on Kerbin.

You can calculate it yourself, though it might be a bit tricky with the staging. TWR at least is easy. Thrust is 55 x 1500 kN. Weight is 9.8 x mass. Mass you can get by sitting it on the pad then going into the tracking station, selecting the rocket, and clicking the i icon on the right.

Nice one. I had one launch a while back where a booster fell off and the rocket started veering. Managed to save it with a bit of quick-thinking by pulling the thrust limiter down on the liquid engine opposite and it came back on track.

If you have got too much thrust, remember you can set the thrust limiter on solid boosters in the VAB, to get a less forceful and longer burn. Of course there's a limit because you want to have a decent TWR at launch.

Watch that the centre of thrust isn't above the centre of mass. That's not a deal breaker but I believe it does cause control screws.

Interstellar ark mission.

I'm not sure what the most evil thing you can do is, but the most evil thing you can't do would be to grant their wish to walk on the Mun - by deorbiting it.

Like Trann says, when you put a stack radially onto another, that second stack is only attached at one point, the first point you place. I find things are more stable if you make that first point down low. That way a given twist at the attachment point moves the engine less. So build your central stack as normal, then add the bottom fuel tank in your lower radial stack, the engine below, and the other tanks above. Make sure the other tanks "snap" onto the radial stack and don't attach directly to the central stack (or the fuel won't flow). Repeat for the upper radial stack, keeping it separate with the only decouplers in the central stack.

You could try putting a part projecting from the SRB near the top (I used the fat I beam in a similar case but lighter choices might be possible) and run a strut diagonally upwards from that right to the orange tanks above. And if need be one diagonally downwards to the bottom of the SRB to brace it. I wonder also if you haven't got some of the SRBs attached to the neighbouring SRB rather than the adapter? That can easily happen.

This is what happens when you sit and gawp instead of cutting the engines.

Built and launched "Space Hotel USA", the station from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, in my sandbox save. Biggest thing I've put in orbit yet, just under 26 tons. My launcher was kinda naff, but did the job. Fuller discussion: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/45377-Idea-for-a-Challenge-41-Space-Stations-from-Films-%28Wikipedia-List%29?p=1006119&viewfull=1#post1006119

Well, Space Hotel USA is complete and in orbit. Prototype: My rendition: Launch slideshow: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52548818@N05/sets/72157641928789405/ Some of the angles could be a bit better, but I don't think I did too badly. The station weighs just under 26 tons* and has a capacity of 14. It's in an inclined orbit 230 miles up. Why inclined? Because Wonka has to be able to take off from his factory at USA-equivalent latitudes and reach it! *I wrote 50 before by mistake. That was the mass of the station plus third stage I think. Everything is stock. Part clipping was used. At the front a modular girder and the bottom end of the tail connector are clipped in forward of the middle hitchhiker container, a flat medium-to-small adapter is clipped backwards in the big-to-medium adapter for aesthetics, and two little battery packs were clipped to look like three batteries. The launcher's a bit of a hack. The booster stacks were clobbering the central mainsail when they were jettisoned. Rather than fix that, I just took it off, and made the central, dorsal, and ventral tanks all feed into the lateral tanks for a sort of two-level asparagus. It wasn't efficient because of too low TWR (<1 at points in the flight), but it worked. Now to make the transfer capsule and the Great Glass Elevator itself! I'd like the capsule to be an SSTO, but doubt that will be possible. (I'll give it a go with a jet or rapier though). The Elevator doesn't need to be SSTO - Wonka says it uses skyhooks, so I'll build a "skyhook" booster! I do, however, want it to be capable of deorbiting the transfer capsule, and I'll cram a Kerbal in there if I can. And of course both vessels need a small docking port somewhere.

Is there an easy way to see all the threads I've posted in, so I can quickly check if there've been updates? Besides subscribing to each thread individually (which would be easy to forget to do). I can see my activity, but that doesn't indicate whether the threads have any posts later than mine.

Slowly lumbering off the pad looks more "realistic", if not more cool. Something I wonder about. True, going too slowly "wastes" delta-v fighting gravity - but can that be made up, within reason, by carrying lighter engines?

So just one burn from LKO to set up the encounter and never mind matching inclinations?

I'm also considering a Minmus flyby, and am wondering if this is the lowest delta-v approach: Reach LKO. Set Minmus as target. Burn prograde at ascending/descending node to put apoapsis out as far as Minmus's orbit. The other node should then be at apoapsis. Make the inclination change at apoapsis, so it's cheap. Wait for encounter, making another prograde burn around periapsis if need be. My only doubt is that a big inclination change (which I may need because the rocket I plan to use is barely controllable on the ascent to LKO) will throw the periapsis out and may make the adjustments to get the encounter more expensive.

I know this is an old thread, but your results are exactly what I would expect of negative mass. It's counter-intuitive stuff. To whit:A positive force applied to a negative mass will accelerate the mass in the opposite direction of the force. This comes simply from F=ma and keeping your signs correct. So the engine thrusting upwards is actually trying to accelerate the negative-mass ship down, and it doesn't take off. The gravitational field of a positive mass (Kerbin, say) accelerates both positive and negative masses towards it. For a negative mass, the force felt points away from Kerbin, but as per the above that force accelerates the negative mass towards Kerbin. Therefore a truly negative mass - as opposed to merely a buoyant mass - will not float away by itself. The experiment I propose you, or anyone who knows how to mod the stuff in, is simple: Make a ship with overall negative mass and an engine thrusting downwards with sufficient force to lift its weight. The weight being calculated as though all the mass was positive. If KSP handles negative mass properly, the ship will take off, flying with the engine burning "the wrong way".

Can't wait to see the complete Death Star! I think the original challenge rules want tweaking. A minimum of 20 stations to "win" is a bit much IMHO. (And anyway a complete Death Star will be a near-cert for winning. Especially if it's modded or video-edited to blow up Kerbin.) Myself, what sprung to mind is the space hotel from Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator (book, there never was a film adaptation). I think I'll take a go at that one, it's pretty simple and should work well with the stock parts. Scaled down mind since full size is over 1000 feet long and in the book was launched in one piece.

Does nearly clobbering the spaceplane hangar count?

Context: Career mode, trying to do as much science as possible before unlocking any new tech. Currently still on tier 0 tech. I got my Mun orbiter into a low enough orbit - Perimun 10km, Apomun 60km - to get EVA reports from different biomes as it went around, and made a few orbits doing that. Then I broke orbit to head back to Kerbin - and hit trouble. I needed 290 m/s of delta-v to get back to Kerbin with a burn at apokerb, and I only had 225. Tried a bit of getting out and pushing, but it was clear that would take too long. Experimented with re-ecountering the Mun, hoping for some sort of gravity assist, but that wasn't looking much good either. Then I gave a bi-elliptic transfer a go. Burn at perikerb to put apokerb as far out as I could without escaping, then on reaching apokerb burn retrograde. Lucky that the Mun and Minmus didn't interfere with this at least. I fell just short of fuel, needing only 3 m/s delta-v more to hit Kerbin, so Bob had to get out and push one more time. Came in fast so the re-entry was a bit tense, but the ship splashed down fine and I recovered it for a haul of 247 science. Might try for a Minmus flyby with the same rocket next, and then I think I'll unlock some tech. I know people HAVE done Mun landings on the tier 0 tech, but not for me I think.

Been playing for a couple of weeks now. Got solidly hooked from when I first fired up the demo. Now got the full version and decided to play career mode with a rule of not researching more tech until I've done all the science I feel I can. Made Munar orbit with the starting tech, though a lot of Kerbals died in the process. Some of my rockets are diabolically hard to control. How feasible is an EVA-only landing on Minmus?