Kobymaru

Hello friends. I have been more or less successful in building Spaceplane-SSTO's, I have two in my hangar which get me up to LKO with one/three Kerbenauts as payload. While I'm pretty proud of my achievement, I wanted to step up my game and bring some knowledge into the development process (like we all did when we learned about the rocket equation and Delta-V). So I tried to dig up some ressources on how aerodynamics behave in KSP, but I failed. Here's what I want to know specifically: The drag is dependent on the square of the airspeed. But it is not dependent on the Angle of Attack, is it? So the drag is the same from every direction? Drag is not (really) dependent on which parts are used, because almost all parts have a drag coefficient of 0.2. It does not add up if I am correct? Is drag different in subsonic/supersonic speeds? How does lift behave? Is it dependent on the speed? If yes, how? How does it depend on the air pressure? Does the center of lift move backwards in supersonic speeds as in real aerodynamics? In stock KSP, I lack the diagnostic tools to build a proper craft, and I am not quite ready to install Ferram Aerospace just yet. Note that I could probably look it all up in some Real-World textbooks/ressources, but if I understand correctly, KSP aerodynamics are vastly different from Real-World aerodynamics.

I think that's because 30 km is lower than 100 km. But your instincts are wrong. To deorbit, you need to kill all forward velocity and that is much lower in a higher orbit.

What do you actually want to do? To you want to lithobrake a derelict craft against a body, or do you want to safely land on it? If you want to crash it: brake at the highest point. You will need the least dV, and the speed you pick up will be vertical and not horizontal (you do not have to work against it). If you slow down to 0 m/s orbital speed at apoapsis, your craft will just drop onto the body like a stone. If you want to land, you should use a different approach: get as low as you possibly can (for Mun ~10 km, for Minmus ~7 km) in a *circular* orbit. There you will need to kill the least dV before landing. Otherwise, I don't understand your question.

Honestly, the only thing I did was: 1. Back up my old .23 save 2. Start .23.5, see that everything is gone, panick, still save 3. Open up my .23 backup save 4. Locate SCENARIO, and copy all "Science", "Tech" and ProgressTracking 5. Open up my .23.5 persistant.sfs, paste them all into the SCENARIO section just as they were. 6. Some technologies are missing in the techtree, just re"buy" those since there's no money yet.

I finally got to build my scavenger! Since the beginning of Kerbal space travel, I have been cluttering my Kerbin Orbit with burnt out rocket stages. In .23 I tried to build an ion scavenger using a Rockomax adapter and some landing struts as "claw", but it was almost impossible to align up to the center of mass, so it would always twist out. So obviously the first thing I did was revisit that concept, put the stock claw on top, double the number of ion engines (4 now) and launch it up. I have been happily deorbiting 40 kYears old stages ever since. Edit: here's my scavenger with a quad-ion engine doing its work