FREEFALL1984

By taking off in a lander and hovering stationary with a zero vertical speed and a zero orbital speed.

Well in the event of that approach then you're right, you will burn FAR more fuel, but I thought the OP was relating moving the periapsis to the surface and performing a last minute horizontal suicide burn to kill horizontal velocity which would use about the same fuel as a vertical burn but with less margin of error, you're talking about having a long constant burn against gravity and indeed holding the craft against gravity which would be insanely inefficient

Gravity drag is defined as the dV required to hold an object in a gravitational field, it is applied to climbing rockets and added to the total dV required to reach orbital velocity on top of atmospheric drag. Based on that then gravity drag is not relevant to a falling body since no energy is required to hold the item against gravity.

I would of thought that (in a perfect scenario) without any unnecessary burns or direction changes the amount of DV used landing on a body with no atmosphere would always be the same regardless of approach since you always need to kill the same amount of total kinetic energy, and therefor you should always chose the most simple approach in order to eliminate any possibility of errors... in fact the only varying factors are orbital direction and height of landing sight.

That might not be too bad an idea, the payload is generally pretty static and unused during launch, once the player decouples it could then revert to individual part physics saving sweet FPS during launch

After rotating my goo tanks and placing them as low as reasonably possible it sees to have fixed it. Jeb is now safe thanks guys

Yeah, the staging for many items is applied in the order they're added, sounds like you added you chute on last and its triggering on launch, drag the parachute symbol to the top stage on your staging bar (right side in VAB and left side on launch pad) this should either be above or on the last decoupler.

Are you using a maneuver node to circularize? it sounds like you're not otherwise it would be obvious which way you needed to burn.

Not on that face, generally I have MJ applied to the lower stages (occasionally to the back face since it weighs nothing ) and my comm antennas are fitted between the Goo and the parachute.

I can't post anything just yet as I'm at work but the particular design in question is a MK1 pod with 2 goo tanks strapped to the sides but rotated so they align vertically with the white lines on the tank. the bottoms of the goo tanks are quite a distance from the hatch but the tops are maybe just slightly close. I'll try a redesign tonight

Ok so here's my issue... Every time I perform EVA I get flung from my rocket, not so far that I can't get back to my rocket, but far enough to cause concern perhaps 200m in the worst case. This happens EVERY time I EVA so it's getting a little annoying, If doesn't matter whether I'm in deep space or in an LKO it's always the same. Also once I finally make it back to my rocket. I am often flung away again as soon as I hit "F" to grab the ladder and it sometimes takes two or three attempts to get back inside. I'm currently running mechjeb remote tech and protractor, Please help, I don't want to loose another kerbal

I hope they make it so you can track objects for extended periods and doing so produces an accurate trajectory, once an item has an accurate trajectory it becomes permanent, this would give you plenty of time to establish where they are heading and decide whether to intervene.

I remember my first landing was actually on minmus, I was incredibly worried that my rocket wouldn't be able to get back to kerbin to my lander had about 1500dV composed of 3 x LV909 rockets attached to FL-T400 tanks which attached with radial decouplers to my central rocket, which was another LV909 attached to an FL-T200 with a materials bay on top and a Mk1 command module attached to that. it was vast and had 12 legs. one minor issue was that I ran out of power when aligning for my retro burn back from minmus. Now I can come out of a 10000m minmus orbit, land on minmus and return home with a single 48-7s and a FL-T200 tank, those where the days

What would be nice would be a tether, so two or more kerbals could link together and then perhaps link themselves to a vessel.

Thanks guys, I'm currently using squad texture redux but I'll give that one a go, Well I installed it last night and it seemed to work just fine, still on low tech stuff so need to get to grips with setting up comms networks. On that subject what would you guys recommend; either having a geosync network of 3 or 4 satellites or having a low altitude network of 8-10, Also for long distance comms would I be better off having a ground based radar system located on each if kerbins poles or having the whole system in orbit and simply upgrading my existing satellites when the time comes.

You can create stacked probes (multiple probes each with a small RCS supply and suitable science, then you can eject them and they dont each need a docking port attached

Ah that's ok then I think I'll give it a go, I'm sure I can spare a few CPU cycles

Ok so I've just about mastered the basics, interplanetary travel, landing, taking off, transfers, rendezvous and all the like, Now I want a challenge, I believe it comes in the form of remote tech, However, my main limiting factor is computer performance, TBH I have a very poor excuse for a laptop which runs up to 200 parts without too much trouble, and will just about run 350, I want to use RT and I know there are a lot of part models, each with lots of new variables, and a lot of line of site calculations to take into account. So how bad is it. How much will it effect the game and will it make it almost unplayable? or are the increased memory demands more modest than I imagine

Well...... This Escalated quickly....

Of course, the energy required would be unimaginable, but I believe it could be possible theoretically speaking of course.

You only want to orbit in the direction of the planet because its ever so slightly more efficient, since you gain surface rotation speeds at ground level on top of your orbital speeds. On a tidally locked body with no atmosphere it makes no (or ridiculously little) difference which way you go. When introducing interplanetary orbits the gain/loss by orbiting kerbin in the correct/wrong direction makes so little difference that it doesn't really matter. But one very important thing to consider, if you plan on docking two craft together, make sure they're both orbiting the same way otherwise it can be a pain getting them to, Yknow, not explode into a million pieces at 4500m/s

The outer warp bubble would be elongated to cover half the distance the target, the warp bubble inside it would be half the length of the first and all subsequent warp bubbles within would be half the size of their parent bubble, each bubble would move half the speed of the parent bubble, that way all bubbles would be moving at the same speed relative to each other and the when the ship reaches its destination all bubbles could be collapsed and no bubbles would interfere with each other.

So I read a different thread which inspired me to ask this and though that this might be more sensible to post on its own... So the warp bubble is essentially compressing space in front of it and stretching space behind is, inside the bubble there must be space for the vessel. Is it therefor not theoretically possible to create elongated warp bubbles (dozens of light years long) which can be traversed internally by another elongated warp bubble which can be traversed internally too by yet another elongated warp bubble and inside that there is a ship... Here's a thought experiment, imagine for a moment that the speed of light is reduced to 15mph, you're on an enclosed deck of a container ship which is moving at 8mph, in that container ship there is a lorry, the lorry is moving at 8mph along the enclosed deck of the ship from the back to front (silly I know) inside that lorry there is a car moving at 8mph also from back to front, inside the car a fly travels from the back of the car to the front of the car at 8mph, because everything is moving slower than 15mph, the laws of physics are being obeyed, but in reality the fly is moving at more than twice the speed of light relative to the ocean. Each of these vehicles, (ship truck and car) is essentially a warp bubble and the fly is Jeb Kerman. In fact there could potentially be thousands or millions of warp bubbles all mere millimeters thick allowing the vessel to travel at almost (but not quite) infinite speeds from A-B yet the bubbles themselves would only be moving a fraction of the speed of light. Please discuss.

My Jeb is currently in an 80000m LKO without the unnecessary constraints of a capsule, I had a minor hiccough performing an EVA while my rocket was still slightly throttled up. That was about 3 years ago, I used his RCS to stabilize his orbit as best as I could, I keep meaning to send someone up to collect him.

By this of course I mean either; create a material which shields an item from the effects of gravity, or create a counter field to negate the effects of gravity. Of course I am no physicist so for me this is purely speculation, but is it possible, obviously we don't have the technology now but in the distant future will this be one of the things to change the world?