nelso

Once I got the Eve encounter (like 1000 km/s from LKO), it's almost zero delta V, just lots of patience. I think I maxed out at about 56 giga-meters apoapsis with 2 good Eve assists (about Dres), then needed a Kerbin assist to get to Jool. Brad Whistance said he usually does Eve-Kerbin-Kerbin-Jool and I've found this seems more consistent and easier (depends how the planets are aligned I guess). I had a lot of trouble with certain technical things, like occasionally time warping right past carefully prepared encounters or nodes (using better time warp), also leaving RCS on by accident which changed my velocity as it rotated. I've started making new quicksaves before any burn or encounter and doing burns manually. Getting back to kerbin is another matter, but a single carefully-planned Tylo-Tylo assist could get me almost anywhere. I think I will try that mun refueling method. Eventually I plan to park a Class-E asteroid in kerbin orbit for refueling, though it does take a huge amount of patience. Here is me trying to get back to kerbin using a Jool assist to slow down. This will be the second assist from Eve, although the kerbin encounter is 8000 m/s.. this kerbal is in for a long trip.

I spent many hours messing with gravity assists, trying to optimize a kerbin-eve-eve-jool path (and other paths) using a reasonable time, like under 10 years. Discovering orbital inclination is the real enemy, and also that KSP is just not good at planning these maneuvers even with advanced transfer planner. The new node editor in the lower left is a nice improvement though, and I've learned to place nodes an orbit or 3 ahead to see future close approaches, and adjust the impending gravity assist off eve. I'm not nearly the levels of Bradley Whistance and thinking I'd rather just spend the extra 1000 m/s to get a straight encounter with jool. Screenshots are by luck getting an almost perfect gravity assist from laythe. The jool system is pretty fun, getting gravity assists by accident rather than fine-tuning encounters.

It's essentially infinite if you add more solar panels. I was able to maintain constant flight flying west, using MechJeb to maintain heading, speed and altitude, and adjusting the speed so the orbital speed was 0m/s. The firespitter propellers are probably OP, same with the wings (they say they use custom lift code, and also if you put them in a fairing they will still act as wings). Thanks for the tip on embedding images.

The "tail plane" is on a pivot in this design, which allows extreme maneuverability. It allows very short takeoffs and landings. On takeoff, the tail plane is pivoted up, which forces the nose up in response, allowing very slow takeoff speeds. More importantly, it allows the tailplane to be pivoted far away from ground, avoiding most of the issues with takeoff. On landing, a similar mechanism is used - the tail can pushed way up to get control of speed. Tail plane keys configured to W and S in this. I sometimes configure to 2 and 1 instead. '3' reverses the propeller direction. Image: Video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTiYm6I3nPQ Craft file https://mega.nz/#!Y1oTVApJ!u1kl3k-gt3G0MtGJdcwMneXo-eT3-Lt-tDDYUnwGBYU Made with KSP 1.7.3. Mods used: Firespitter & Infernal robotics: InfernalRobotics_v3.0.2.zip , Firespitter_7.13.zip

I modeled a real reaction wheel setup using IR, one I saw in a scott manley video to understand reaction wheels better. Used a rotatron to spin the wheels, and joint pivotron to change their axis of rotation. When the joint pivotrons rotate, it greatly changes the angular momentum of the wheels, which is transferred into the rest of the craft in the opposite direction. As in scott manley's video, there are 2 for balance. I think in practice they'd set it up a lot differently. It's possible to see how they can be saturated. By the way, I have noticed this in a few builds, when I have multiple IR components bound to a key using the IR editor window, it slows down the framerate a lot when pressing the keys. It's visible in the video. https://streamable.com/uo7va

Thank you so much for updating for recent KSP versions. This is probably a common story, but I used IR around 2014 and accidentally upgraded KSP after wanting to play again, so the old mods no longer worked, and wasn't able to downgrade to a compatible version for the mods. I would've given up getting KSP up and running again if you hadn't got this working for the current version. Just a clip of using the new IR, rebuilt a plane I made in 2014 with new 2019 parts https://streamable.com/rflju

I thought this would be funny. The plane jumps using a leg on a hinge and glides a short distance, and can jump again when it's about to hit the ground. It was easier to use right handed controls (keys 8 and 9) for the leg hinge. The trick to jumping is to have the right combination of angle and timing. To get started: roll forward and activate the hinge, when in the air aim the nose down to get moving forward and retract the hinge before the next jump. The hardest part is probably controlling the orientation. I used speed 10 on the hinge and didn't use ASAS. The general idea works without wings but wings seem to make it easier to get the timing and angle correct, as well as glide a bit. http://www./download/5059k36d7chrca3/JumpingPlane.craft