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Hmm okay, so I'm going far too fast. Could I try a different body then? What has the best ratio of orbital speed to mass?

Hey everyone! I'm trying to look at gravity assists. One homework problem in my physics class was the following: A satellite (with mass negligible compared to that of the Earth) is making a fly-by of the Earth on a hyperbolic orbit. Let the velocity of the Earth be ve. The satellite originally approaches from the negative x-direction, does a loop around the earth, and then flies off in the same direction it came from. Far from the Earth, the magnitude of the satellite's x-component of velocity is vi when approaching and vf when receding. For the case where vi=4ve, what is the final speed vf of the satellite in terms of the speed of the earth ve? So, for the class, the answer was 2ve. Simple enough. I wanted to visualize this in KSP. The first thing I did was I switched the wording from "earth" to "mun" - don't want to deal with any annoying atmospheric effects. Then I did a bunch of math to get the following HyperEdit parameters: Inclination: 0 Eccentricity: 15.292 Semi-major axis: -855000 Lon. of asc. node: 344.657 Argument of periapsis: 216.221 Mean anomaly at epoch: -9.705 Epoch: 36643.375 These numbers should put you in a gravity assist with mun at around 9,000 m closest approach. The velocity of the mun is 542 m/s. Thus, to fit with the problem's value of 4 times the velocity of the body, we want to be going around 2168 m/s. Time warping until just before mun capture confirms this number. Once we're into the mun's SOI, we have a velocity of 1625. Once we escape the mun, we're going 1625 relative to the mun - to be expected. Once we get back out to Kerbin's SOI, we expect our velocity to be 2*542, or 1084 m/s. But we look and we're at 2165. This gravity assist only took off 3 m/s from our velocity. Nothing, really. Why is this? I think it lies in the fact that I'm not fulfilling the "does a loop around the [mun]" that existed in the original problem. But how could I possibly make it do a loop? It seems like my speed is too high to really be affected. Can anyone explain where I'm going wrong here? If there are any true saints around here, it would be excellent to get a modified set of orbital parameters, but if not, that's fine, I can do it myself. I just need to have a nudge in the right direction to understand what's wrong with my maneuver.

Just because you have a Kerbal on board doesn't mean you have a pilot. Every Kerbal has a job. They can be Pilots, Engineers, or Scientists. Only a Pilot knows how to use SAS. Who do you have on your ship? What's his name?

I used to play KSP on a crappy laptop. Now I have a gaming PC I built. Both machines have 4 GB of RAM. However, with the new machine, each session of gameplay doesn't last more than 5 flights before I end up crashing to desktop with a message saying "There has been an error log created" or something to that effect. I have no clue why this is happening or why I would end up running out of RAM. Task manager never shows KSP reaching even 1.5 GB, and I don't run anything else in the background while I play. Why might the game be crashing, why wouldn't it crash on the laptop, and how can I fix it? Thanks for any ideas. If the specifics of the error log, or my computer specs would be helpful, I'd be happy to post. Just say what specifically you're looking for and I'll say so as soon as possible.

I've been trying to build SSTO's for a long time, but I just can't get it. The only tip I can ever seem to find is "make sure center of lift is behind center of mass!" but I still can't get it. I know air intakes are important, but with so many different kinds and no explanations of them, it's difficult to understand how to engineer my ships. Can anyone explain each air intake and its pros and cons?

I had a ton of fun messing around in .25 yesterday. Now I went to continue playing, and the game won't launch. It loads all the parts. Then when it's done, it shows the orbiting planets "Loading..." in the bottom right, loading the menu. After a moment, when the menu should pop up, the game stops running. I have no clue why. I also don't know what's important to post here for diagnostics (Save files? Game folder? System specs? Mother's maiden name?) so if there's anything that would be helpful I'll be glad to post it, just ask for whatever's useful. Thanks for any help.