FREEFALL1984

So rocket landing it the best option, hmm I hoped to avoid that, its very fuel heavy.

My first stage always uses jets, my current lightweight lifter has enough guts to launch a 20 ton payload in to a 75km orbit then transfer to 120km orbit adjust inclination and dock with my station with about 400dV left over, The full vessel including jets and jet fuel AND the 20 ton cargo only weighs in at 89tons, This is with me performing the maneuvers, so it includes for my very high 14km gravity turn (it's only that high because I'm terrified I'll get hit when jettisoning my jets so I keep vertical until I stage if I grew a pair and did an early (5km and 40 degree) gravity turn and burned more of my jet fuel I could probably do it with 900dV left over. But it means I don't actually burn my first stage until I hit 14km, saving a hella lot of dV. And in fairness I tend to bring about 3x more fuel than I need in my jets and ditching 70% full jet tanks.

HAHA that would explain my misery, lol, So I'm guessing the ISP is still ATM on liquid fuel rockets and not VAC, might have to have a serious rethought of my lander design

I use MJ, but only the maneuver planner, I've have it perform the transfer/match speeds and inclination, which I could easily do myself, but I insist on performing the docking without any assistance, now I've docked about 40 vessels I find it fairly easy, once good idea though it to put your MJ unit on a clearly visible location on the "front" of the rocket in the VAB and then you can use it for an orientation reference point.

Haha I never said it was pretty but it's effective. Also you shouldn't need to burn vertically, I didn't mean collision course like a 90degree impact, just a glancing blow with a trajectory only barely touching surface. you'll only be killing orbital speed so should't be too bad

Hey guys, I've recently designed a heavy (15 ton) unmanned lander to touch down on duna. the weight of the lander is suspended by 2 jet engines which are positioned in such a way that the vessel always floats upright, I then use the jets to make it hover and use RCS to maneuver unless I need high speeds and I'll tilt the vessel a little and throttle up like a jet-copter. Also the RCS are used to make me fly up and down since I need very little additional thrust beyond my jets (which I set at about 40% thrust depending on fuel remaining) in order to land I simply RCS downwards and then once I (gently) touch down, I kill the jets and wait for the thrust to stop while still RCSing down. I have an abundance of fuel and an abundance of mono-prop and the thing flies like a beauty on kerbin. The idea was to make an Vtol lander which could sample multiple biomes and transmit the data then find a good landing site to set up a duna base then wait at this location for my landing party in an in-game year or so. But here's the problem. I tug the vessel to duna with my nuclear tug and aerobrake into a clean orbit disconnect the tug, then I reduce my peri until its about 6000m with RCS, but once I'm in the atmosphere I cannot for the life of me get my jets to fire up and my parachutes tear off resulting in my lander smashing into the ground at uber high speeds... I have a feeling that I accidentally fired them when I originally launched the vessel from kerbin but I can't check now because I'm at work, So here's my questions. 1 - If a flame-out has occurred, then what's the procedure for getting them going again if indeed there is a procedure. 2 - Whats the ceiling on a standard Jet with 6 radial intakes on duna? Its also worth mentioning that on each engine I have 6 intakes, 3 pointing up for airflow when climbing and 3 pointing down, for use when falling. I also have MJ, protractor and Scansat installed although they're not to blame for my poor designs lol

Set yourself onto a collision course with the planet, and then place a maneuver node on (or a couple of hundred meters above) ground level to kill all of your velocity. You can even get MJ to burn your node for you and it'll always leave you few feet above surface for a soft touchdown.

I had the same issue, I started playing KSP over the Christmas holidays, and within a few hours I was successfully achieving Munar landings, then I stopped playing for a few months, and when I came back I created a new career game, but the magic was gone and I was incapable of getting into a stable orbit, I think the issue was I was trying to be too ambitious, I was trying to build too big and was forgetting the fundamentals. Once I realized this I started building simple lifters which could get themselves into orbit with a little 15ton payload, a 15 ton probe which easily travel to jool or duna without any issues whatsoever, then I would use that same lifter for a long while until the requirement increased, and I would scale up my lifters. I would suggest a simple lifter made from 9x FL-t800 tanks, and 5 LVt30s in an asparagus setup then cover the whole thing in radial jet engine nodes with their own tiny fuel supplies and their own intakes, 12 basic jets can get the main rocket, and 15 tonnes of payload up to 15000m before you even need to fire your rockets

Not really, in fact I imagine it would be something like a pleasant 15RPMish but I could be wrong, remember the full structure would end up being about 12 XL girders long, I imagine these are around 3 meters long so that about 36 meters in length, including tanks and habitat modules, My concern is whether the structural elements would be able to cope, a pair of 20000kg weights rotating fast enough to produce 1g would apply a total of 392kn of force to the central hub. excluding the forces required to rotate the weight of the docked vessel and fuel supplies. Not the sort of force to be simply sniffed at lol In total the station would be around 36 meters wide by 12 meters tall unloaded, but with a stack of fuel and a docked ship it would probably be about 36 meters deep depending on the ship. I could be wrong with the dimensions but Its a best guess based on the rocket diameters

Looked at the infernal robotics site spaceport page and it says they're not yet compatible with career mode so I can't use them Edit: silly me I didn't read the small print

Right, so to summarize, taking full advantage of the Oberth effect when in a close high speed orbit is more beneficial than performing a gravity assist around a moon, simply because the fuel I use performing and perfecting my planetary intercept would be more efficiently spent at the higher speeds in orbit around kerbin than in a slower speed orbit around mun or in interplanetary space which would also likely require more corrections than normally necessary. Thank you gentlemen, I knew the Oberth effect was important but I never realized quite how much of a difference it could make

Indeed the orange balance tank would be about 20t based on an approximate 20tons of habitation module, and serves simply to balance the system, the main fuel supply is lateral to the central hub so rotates along its own axis. As would any large interplanetary ships which dock with it

Hey guys, I want to create my first true space station (rather than just a few fuel tanks attached together) and I was thinking of trying a new design which I'd like to run by you all. The design would consist of a habitation module to provide accommodation for at least 10 kerbals, connected to two XL girders, with a clampotron on the end. then a single "balance" module, and a single orange fuel tank attached at the opposite side, this one also has two XL girders and a clampotron. this balance tank attaches to the opposite side of the hub from the habitation module, the central hub then has two utility booms attached to the top bottom, which would each consist of two girders and with a whole crapload of batteries, and solar panels on each one, although they would be identical in order to keep balance. Then on the back of the hub I would have a fuel store consisting of 3 orange tanks with a central clampotron, and on the opposite side from the fuel store I would have a long XL girder boom with a single clampotron on the end. The idea is that when the habitation module, balance module and utility booms are attached the whole thing begins to rotate, at which point I balance the whole station by dumping fuel from the balance tank until the center of mass and indeed the center of rotation is in the exact middle of the Hub at this point the I increase the speed of the rotation until I achieve 1G for my kerbinauts. This then allows me to attach the fuel tanks and any radially symmetrical vessels while the station is still in rotation. I have a few questions, firstly - the game would freeze the rotation of the vessel as soon as I timewarp how can I prevent that. Secondly - are clampotrons strong enough to achieve my goals. Finally - would I need to match to rotational speed of the station when I dock with it, or would it allow me a little tolerance or would it simply be safer to stop the rotation?

Would that not produce very diffused shadows rather than the very sharp shadows we see on the photos, One thing which occurs to be is why is the archived video footage is so terrible, perhaps the original transmitted footage would of been terrible and grainy due to poor data transmission rates, but surely if they're travelling all the way to the moon they would of brought a method of recording the video feed in much higher quality, Even super8 was a better quality than the official archive video, and I'm pretty sure the Nasa engineers could of come up with a way to shield the camera from too much radiation to prevent the tape from becoming corrupt. Also I found it strange that Kennedy promised to get onto the moon by the end of the decade and lo and behold, he made it to the moon with just 6 months to space. Almost sounds as though a politician made a promise.... Strange Other than that I'm pretty sure they did go to the moon although even with all the doubt floating around. If they did fake it then why did they send so many missions before after the landing? I know we (the general public) are lot smarter and less gullible than we where in 1969 so back then two maybe three launches would of convinced people, I know its not quite the same but I can fly a KSP lander to the moon, land and return home using no calculations other than maneuver nodes, which is the real life equivalent of having a skilled astrophysicist crunching the numbers for me. All you need is a big enough rocket and some guts the actual tech to land on the moon did exist in the 60s so why not

I've been perusing the forum and other sites trying to find a simple way to decide what would be the most efficient method of interplanetary travel. Many people, including Scott Manley, state that the escape burn should be performed in a low Kerbin orbit. Logic on the other hand states that it would be far more efficient to burn towards a normal or antinormally positioned moon (normal/antinormal relative to kerbin trajectory) If you hit the munar periapsis at the same time as you hit your interplanetary transfer window, you should be able to gain some of the relative speed of the mun. obviously you would need to be quite precise in your manuver nodes but the benefits would be huge. On one occasion I set up manuver nodes to enter mun SOI and had MJ execute them while I was AKF, I was AFK longer than I thought and when I returned I was on an escape trajectory a long way past the mun and obviously I spent no more fuel than I would normally of spent cleanly getting into a munar SOI So can someone explain why people think the oberth effect is more efficient than a munar gravity assist, in laymans terms

Laythe if all that mattered was appearance and views, but minmun if you actually wanted a practical base

I've recently started using MJ on a fresh career, I never use it for anything I couldn't do on my own though , and I insist on performing my own takeoffs and landings. I often simply use it to "execute node" rather than having it create the nodes for me

Yes, I'd like that too, I also would like a context sensitive right click menu which appears when I'm selecting one of two ships in close proximity to each other on the map. Currently I'm sometimes even having to quite to the space centre to try and change vessel

Hello guys, before I start I would like to point out that I know NOTHING about modding, I know how to install them and use them but not create them. Anyway, to my suggestion, Stop me if this already exist, but would it be possible to make a timer, similiar to Kerbal alarm clock, which alerts the player of impending gravity assist possibilities, these would of course be classified as times when the mun or minmus (perhaps other moons too) are either normal or antinormal to kerbins trajectors (depending on planet you wish to transfer to) at the exact same time as a given planetary intercept window, it should also provide an optimum launch window for leaving kerbins orbit and hitting the munar peri at the optimal time. Obviously these launch windows would be fairly rare so some kind of tolerance would need to be included, to allow people to GA more regularly at the cost of efficiency via imperfections in lunar angle at the given window. Also, even more rare windows could be achieved by using a double GA from munar GA into a minmus GA, assuming all of the planets/moons are aligned correctly, for me this would be the holy grail of gravity assist. I'm currently trying to GA probes into interplanetary intercepts but because the windows for an accurate GA are quite very small, I tend to end up spending almost as much dV trying to fine tune my orbit into an encounter as I would if I just flew direct from kerbin. What do you think?

Could you not form a propulsion system based on the conservation on angular momentum. I'm thinking kinda gyroscopic oars, lol

There MUST be a WAAAY

Ahhh I see, so what you're saying is that even if I where to use a disk the same size as the smaller pulley, the force would be balanced through the relative acceleration and deceleration of the disks at the various points, which would always and irrefutably negate any net forces generated. Effectively turning this design from a gyroscopic inertial thruster, into a noise making machine.

Hmm, what if I modified the design to have the weights on the smaller pulley match the size of the pulley itself. that way as the weights travel around the smaller pulley they would generate no centripetal force at all relative to the belt but would be essentially rotating on the spot.

Sorry for the hastily drawn sketch I'm supposed to be working

In case you're unaware, a Gyroscopic inertial thruster is a device for turning kinetic energy into a unidirectional reactionless force through a complex mechanical motion. So far hundreds of designs have been patented which claim to achieve just this, although none of them have proven to provide any unidirectional force at all. My design would involve using a flexible belt arranged around 2 narrow pulleys, (one pulley larger than the other) in a figure of 8 the pulleys are then rotated quickly. At the larger pulley, weights are attached to the outside of the belt in such a way that they would effectively "miss" the smaller pulley as they rotate. All the weights maintain a constant orientation to the belt as they travel around at speed. As the weights go around the larger pulley they splay outwards and create a certain amount of centripetal force. As the same weights then proceed around the smaller pulley, they are compressed inwards closer to the center of the rotation and create slightly less centripetal force. To me (a mere layperson) logic dictates that the variations between the relative speed between the belt and the weights, ie the weights traveling faster than the belt on the large pulley, and slower than the belt on the small pulley, but the belt itself always remaining at a constant speed. A net force would be produced in the direction of the large pulley. So what I want to know is whether this would be a feasible design or whether there is some obvious standout error in my logic?