FREEFALL1984

Yeah your T/W is too low, after starting the gravity turn you should be able to slowly "follow" the prograde marker down the navball towards the horizon and the prograde marker should never drop below the horizon during launch, if you find you're having to burn towards the sky to keep the prograde marker above the horizon while still in the atmosphere then you're asking too much of your lifter and you might find that removing the fuel from the payload before launch helps a little although whether you are left with enough fuel to transfer any excess from your lifter to your payload once in orbit is a different matter. it's often a useful technique with big lifters and interplanetary tugs. If the issue is that the rockets orientation is flipping and then suddenly aiming groundwards then you may have too much drag on the payload, the only way I can think to fix this is to never point too far from the prograde marker in order to keep the center of thrust behind the center of drag so start the gravity turn early, (about 5000m) and turn very slowly

I had a similiar issue, I sent a landing probe and 2 mini landers into the jool system, hoping to land on laythe with my big probe and send the little probes to land on bop and pol, anyway I got my big probe onto Laythe and left my little probes in a reasonably stable eccentric orbit while I caught my next duna window, by the time my manned lander made it half way to duna my mini probes where on a kerbol escape trajectory, I didn't see exactly what happened, but it seems that tylo may of played a part.

I havent had a chance to read them yet although I will be eager to read them now Another question is, if the human race ever comes to understand the universe with absolute precision down to the smallest boson, could we not then simulate our own universe and be able to see the future?

So, I want to learn how to build a reliable (and controllable) Vtol. It needs about 4000m/s of DV and enough T/w to be able to safely navigate on kerbin (more than 2 should be ok) Ideally it should also be able to function using wings alone in an emergency although since it will primarily be operating on the mun they need to be light and small. It also needs a central docking port on the top and bottom to enable me to both dock with a station and attach it to the top of a big lifter to get it into orbit. Since this will be my first Vtol craft I dont know where to start, I know that balance will be important and lots of RCS is a must. but I have no clue where to begin, what can you guys advise

I'd like to see a 3.75m stack separator so I could launch uber big orbital fuel storage tanks. that said it would be nice to have 3.75m docking ports and some 3.75m habitation and science modules, perhaps a microgravity research lab could be made which would allow a constant trickle of science.

mathematically there are more chances of being killed by an asteroid impact than contracting BSE as described in great detail in the book Impact Earth by Austen Atkinson which is a actual book which anaylsis the chance of being hit, the potential options for avoidance, the measures we have taken to spot NEOs including information on the very interesting asteroid JA-1 which was 500m in diameter and came within 450000km of the earth in 1996 but was originally plotted to impact us, and nobody was informed. It also goes into what would happen if we where hit in great depths and has a fictional side story showing the breakdown of humanity during and after such an event. Its not a bad read I recommend having a look. http://www.amazon.com/Impact-Earth-Asteroids-Meteors-The-Growing/dp/1852277890

Play the career mode, nothing more satisfying than unlocking a bunch of new tech, also remember this game is in beta, so things like finances and static space structures, perhaps science gathering hubble style telescopes are easily implemented and will likely be used on future releases

Dig a 5 mile deep 6 foot wide borehole in a suitably isolated location, cast the waste into a 6ft concrete pellet then coat the whole thing in an inch of PVC and drop it in the hole, you could stack the pellets a half mile tall and have hundreds in the borehole before dropping in a few ounces of explosives and detonating a couple of miles below the surface to fill the hole without damaging the surface environment. You could then completely ignore it for the rest of human history. and move onto the next hole, with modern equipment you could dig such a hole in just a few weeks and each hole could probably contain a couple of hundred ton of waste material. Alternatively just throw the stuff into existing dried up gas or oil fields, these huge underground caverns would prove more than adequately isolated to store nuclear waste.

I sent a lander mission back to minmus with 5 toroidal aerospikes 2500dv and a t/w of 90 (on minmus) and 5 of each experiment. I then spent an hour or two "bouncing" around the different biomes before heading home and performing a chuteless soft landing on the roof of the KSC, in all I clocked about 1600 science points and now I'm worknig towards doing the same thing on the mun, although for this one I'm going to use an orbital station for refueling and the return of all my science due to the increased DV requirements of landing on mun. Edit: just point out, this is not my first minmus mission and I have happily landed and returned from laythe and duna a number of times but I heard a rumor that there was a hella lot of science to be had by heading back and cleaning house

Moving my main area of intakes behind the center of mass seems to work a treat, now my spaceplanes fly straight and true regardless of my speed and altitude, the only minor issue now is that I cant get a correct "looking" approach, I like the idea of lifting the nose and flaring through the upper atmosphere, but now my spaceplanes are so stable I cant seem to get this effect and they always seem to go pointy end first when travelling at re-entry speeds. Not that it matters in kerbins thick soupy atmosphere and I dont use DRE so not an issue Thanks for the tips guys

Instead of a door a latex sheet could be stretched across the opening, the ship would have to burst through it and of course the pressure would only be able to be "quite low" since the sheet would distort

However if we evolved to live in 2 atm, and suddenly had to live in 1 atm, we would probably be fine, a little short of breath but otherwise fine same works the other way, if I was suddenly exposed to 2 atm I would be just dandy, ergo, the difference between 0 atm and 1 atm is much greater than the difference between 1 atm and 2 atm.

Indeed, the whole universe could be small anomaly in a research lab somewhere, perhaps being watched right now by the "creator" Or it could be a ball of some mysterious matter and energy experiment in a glass orb or something stuffed into a store room in some university like what Terri Pratchett wrote about in his book "snuff" Or it could just be a simulation on a mindbogglingly powerful supercomputer. Perhaps once we understand every aspect of the universe and all its nuances, we too could create a computer powerful enough to run the comparatively simple simulations which would in turn produce a universe of its own. Once this simulated universe grows and develops, perhaps sentient life will be naturally created within it, the "life" will become intelligent enough to understand the laws of its own universe. Then it will produce a computer capable of running the same simulations, and we end up having three universes stacked inside each other like russian dolls. Perhaps the universe which ours exists within as a simulation, exists within another universe, perhaps time is scalable and each universe it simulated faster than the last. Perhaps the universe that ours lives within has only been simulating us for 1000000th of a second yet billions of years have passed. Or we could just be barking up the wrong tree, either way, we'll never know.

Kasuha made a good point, if you're just aiming for a close kerbol approach you could try to slingshot your way down the planets, personally I would try and time it so the mun is 45 degrees to kerbins prograde and minmus is approaching almost 45 degrees past prograde (sorry my orbital terminology is slightly rust) then slingshot around the mun into a close encounter with minmus and burn at minmus peri to slow your kerbol orbital speed.

Yeah just make sure you're orbital period is in phase with kerbins, so for instance you could make your new orbital period 1/2 of kerbins and you would perform 2 orbits per kerbins 1, as long as you're pretty exact once in kerbols SOI, you should be able to easily perform a correction burn to finetune your approach,

Would it be possible to send an payload into space with only a series of small boosters to circularize the orbit. The idea is simple, a curved maglev track about 50km long, the start of the track is above ground the and it dips into the ground by several km, the other end of the track comes out the side of a mountain a half dozen km above sea level. The payload is loaded into a transport vehicle at the start of the track which has little more than a beefed up heat shield and ballast tanks to add mass if the payload is underweight. it also has a small liquid fueled rocket to enable it to circularize and some RCS thrusters to assist with docking. The transport vehicle is designed to be very aerodynamically efficient and stable in order to minimize drag. Then bang, the payload is accelerated to high enough speeds to both overcome the drag of the atmosphere and to maintain enough speed for a simple circularization burn. So here's some questions, Roughly how fast would you need to be traveling to reach orbital speeds AFTER you overcome atmospheric drag and reach orbital altitudes to perhaps rendezvous with a station in space based on a 15 ton craft. based on the described track, how many Gs would the payload need to endure. I personally imagine it would be well beyond the realms of possible, even if there was a way to produce enough energy to send 15 tons of payload to several times orbital velocity against air resistance, to do it within just 50km would be a huge explosive release of power, also the heat shielding would need to be made from imaginary materials since the temperatures endured would be far higher than reentry.

People keep saying its only one atmosphere of difference, might be worth noting that the "one atmosphere" is the most important one, the difference between negative and positive pressure is quite big. in fact there isn't a pump on earth that can produce a perfect vacuum in fact even existence of a perfect vacuum is questionable.

I'm pretty sure im not overcorrecting, my sub orbital flights seem fine when below 1200m/s and between 20km and 30km, and my aircraft are stable enough to generally hold a heading without pitching up or down by any margin. but as soon as I hit that magic 1300m/s all hell breaks loose. Tonight Imma try using an independently fueled engine design with much more drag behind the center of mass, making it hopefully fly like a dart.

Thats some very pretty intake spam, I will be trying that as soon as I get home

The main nasa KS25x4 engine clusters wont overheat they only reach about 3/4 of the way up the bar assuming there's no other exhausts hitting them. I've even had them set up in a 9 engine asparagus and no risk of explosion.

Yeah, simply click on the hatch and it'll bring up a list of kerbals, same for the hitchhiker storage container

This sounds the most plausible since my designs tend to rely on ram intakes and engine nacelle for almost all of the intake supplies. unfortunately I cannot post pictures just yet, I'm currently at work, most of my designs tend to be as long as 1 FL-T800, a mk2 inline cockpit an engine nacelle and a ram intake, at the longest, and are a total of 5 tanks wide, with generally 3 Delta wings on each of the the outermost tanks. but I have ram intakes on ALL tanks. Which could cause the symptoms.

Have you unlocked the ARM engines yet? for someone like me who plays on a pretty terrible craptop. The Arm engines and fuel tanks are a godsend, where I would normally require a half dozen orange tanks and a whole bunch of mainsails, along with the additional tanks to stop them overheating and a heap of struts to stitch the whole thing together, Now I can lift the same payload with just a very basic 2 stage rocket made from perhaps 20 parts and still have half my second stage fuel to spare, in fact since the ARM parts came along I've ALWAYS had about a half a giant 3.75m tank left over regardless of the payload. But if you haven't yet unlocked those parts, then consider using jet engines attached to radial small tanks and decouplers with radial intakes on the outside of the main stage, make sure you have enough jet engines to get a T/w of about 1.1 or more since when you're not moving on the pad you're engine output is lower. and once you hit about 12km then ignite the main engines and jettison the jet engines, basically for the addition of a few extra parts you've just raised your launchpad up to 12km. obviously 50 tonnes +lifter will come to about 350 tonnes + the jet engines themselves so you'll likely need about 25 jet engine modules to lift this thing and since each one comprises of 4 parts (tank, engine, intake and decoupler) you're basically adding 200 parts to the original design. But using that method i have made orbit with an 80 ton rocket, 22 tons of which was payload. and ending up with a full FL-t400 spare, and a 1:4 payload to lifter ratio is pretty good.

Hi all, I have been building conventional rockets for a pretty long time and decided I should try to build an SSTO spaceplane, I have encountered a recurring issue with my designs which I cannot for the life of me overcome, After reaching about 20km and flattening out my flight path where I can gain speed quite easily with no notable stability issues, I happily reach 1300m/s. At this point my intake air is about 0.2 (not 0.02) thanks to a bit of light intake spamming (ram intakes only so no ugly 50 radial intakes attached to every possible surface) At this point my nose starts to climb and drift to the left or right and I end up in a flat spin which is often so aggressive that I drop to less than 5000m before being able to recover (if I can recover at all) Disabling all engines does nothing to help and my rockets are not yet fired. Also my designs tend to have fuel efficiency at their heart so I use two small LV909 engines and a FL-T800 tanks meaning there is a slightly inevitable speed drop when trying to switch engines which I may switch out to aerospikes due to the ISP being the same but the huge step up in thrust. Ultimately I would like to be able to build an SSTLAB plane (single stage to laythe and back) thanks to the newly overpowered ion engines. But to do this I need at least enough rocket fuel for 2 transfers to orbit (one on kerbin an one on laythe) and enough fuel to be able to explore laythe for a reasonable time (perhaps a half circumnavigation) and I also need enough xenon and solar panels to allow for 2 interplanetary transfers, all while carrying around 2 tons of science apparatus. If this is all too big of an ask I could send a forward command post out to laythe with fuel for the return to orbit and return to kerbin although I would rather just do it in one hop. Any advice you could give would be much appreciated.

A simple way of looking at it is that the entropy of the system forces the gas from a high energy situation to a lower energy situation, imagine two air cylinders connected with a pipe with a valve located on it. You fill one of the tanks with compressed air, in doing so you're essentially packing kinetic energy into the first cylinder. Then you open the valve between the two cylinders and what happens. Entropy causes the gas leaks to between cylinders until the pressure is equal and the same amount of kinetic energy is stored in both cylinders, if you released all the air from both cylinders the gas would diffuse and lose energy until it matched that of the surrounding environment, likewise if gravity suddenly didn't exist the atmosphere would (thanks to entropy) float away and diffuse throughout the universe, but thankfully the gravity is applying enough force to create what could be considered an entropy "barrier", Due to the magnetosphere among other variables, the atmosphere cannot gain enough energy to reach escape velocities and climb higher than this "barrier" If the magnetosphere was to disappear (like mars 4 billion years ago) then the atmosphere would be swept into space, slowly at first but as the atmosphere itself thins the process would increase in speed, until it neared a point where the sun could no longer provide enough energy for the atmosphere to reach escape speeds. by which time the atmosphere would be thin and low and would probably be unable to support surface life and we would all be either dead or living deep underground where gravity is strong enough to hold a dense atmosphere in. Which is why if there ever was going to be life on mars, its had the choice of either evolving to live underground or evolving to live on an increasingly hostile surface.