EdFred

It's time to colonize Minmus. So I get my modules ready for departure. I've done the trip to Minmus a bunch of times manually, so I just fire of MechJeb, launch to plane/redezvous, and alt+tab to answer some email. I come back to KSP and my module is out of Kerbin's SOI, and I need 8000dV to get to Minmus. WTH?!?!? Revert to Launch. Manually create the node. Oh. Whoever said the Mun isn't large enough to provide decent gravity assists, whatever. I got a huge, unwanted assist.

http://www.sidnaw.org/kerbal/EveChallenge.htm Trip documentation and craft file. Note that the craft file contains MechJeb and KER. So if it won't load, you may have to go into the craft file and remove those parts.

I don't think that's it since the Mun, Minmus, Kerbin all are easy to follow from sphere to flat. Eve doesn't seem to be even close.

You're already right on the edge, since wiki says 2800dV is needed, and you are *right there* Your ascent is going to have to be near perfect. Your missing it by about 7% which is probably about what most people are at with perfection vs execution. Just keep tweaking your ascent profile.

Starting: 1000pts 15 stages: -75pts 4 engine types beyond 1: -40 Part count: 299 parts = -29.9 Elevation: 19m: +240.5 (impact prediction showed 2m, but it came up just a bit short of the shoreline) Weight at KSC: -212.7165 Extra Kerbals: +0 Total: 882.8835 Screenshots to follow.

What's your TWR on Laythe? You can have eleven billionty dV, but if your TWR is 0.2 you aren't going anywhere.

Extravert(89%) iNtuitive(50%) Thinking(50%) Judging(22%)

Not to be ticky tacky, but that's not centripetal force. Centripetal force is the force acting inwards to keep you from flying off. (Swinging something at the end of a rope for example) All you are experiencing is inertia when you go flying off a carousel.

No, it's definitely different. Look at the shape of the continents.

Why does the Eve in kerbalmaps not look like the Eve in KSP? There's a lot of water missing.

Yeah, but just build something with 12kdV and you don't have to worry about where to land.

All stock parts....go to Duna and back. Less than 40 total parts. No mods at all - not even MJ or KER. (I haven't seen if I can do it yet) I'm pretty sure I could to it with less than 40, probably even less than 20 now that I think about it.

And as with all things Kerbal, discovered on accident. Hey, where's my chutes? Oh...um....well....I might be able to slow down enough with engines. Chutes? We don't need no stinking chutes!

Nice score. I updated the leaderboard. I'm going suicidal with mine. No chutes to return to Kerbin. Why? Not going to refuel or dock when departing Eve, and the chute costs me 400 dV on ascent.

Says who? If you've got 200dV left and a TWR ratio of 3 you can suicide burn to the surface. How do I know that? I just returned from Eve sans parachutes. It's 5 units of fuel left in a FL-T200 with a lander can and a Rockmax 48-75. MC: Wait....wait....wait.... Jeb: Now? MC: Wait...wait...wait... Jeb: Now? MC: Wait...wait...OK full burn! ... ... Jeb: Whoa, it worked! (You can do it with 130 dV but your engine and tank explode on impact, the lander can and Jeb will survive)

I started out the same way. MOAR is GUD! Then realized I was waaaaaay over weight on things. You're going to Minmus? Your final stage only needs to be a FL-T100 tank and a Rockomax 48-75 That provides around 1500dV - which is more than enough to deorbit Minumus, land, and even come all the way back to Kerbin.

Or just make your light a subassmebly with the appropriate values, and use that instead of the regular ones.

The yellow retrograde marker moves most likely because you arrested your descent enough that your vertical speed was near 0, and it's switching from retrograde to prograde. Also, does your navball say surface or orbit when on descent? You are probably also touching down on uneven ground (pretty much everywhere on Mun) and are landing relatively hard. What is your touchdown speed? I try to land on Mun at less than 2m/s vertical speed. <1m/s is preferable.

I was able to get 96 launched into LKO in 6 minutes. If it weren't for the lag, I could probably build a satellite sprayer which would take up at least 500 at a time. 500 x 10 times in an hour = 5000 sats into orbit into an hour. But I think my motherboard would melt. All I did was take 24 radial attachment points slapped on a Rockomax 32 tank. Stacked those 4 high, threw an engine on it. Then my sats consisted of the....and it just crashed KSP....I think they were 1 okto probe core, 1 solar panel, 1 communitron 16, 1 oscar tank and the teeniest rockomax engine. Decoupled those to the radial attachment points. Attain LKO. Jettison. I think my computer was running at spf rather than fps.

I don't think it's cheating at all. I can actually get better dV usage doing things manually over MechJeb. But, I don't want to sit and babysit a 20 minute fuel burn.

That's pretty much what I would have done. As many as I could fit of them on a lifter, all with oscar tanks and the tiniest engine for deorbit. Repeat as many times as I can in an hour. I bet I could get 1000 satellites in orbit.

After further review the time frame aspect has been removed. Sorry guys, I didn't realize it would skew the results that badly.

If your TWR is that high on an atmospheric body, you end up having to throttle back or you're wasting burn against terminal velocity - at least that's what happens when I go that high.

I try to have at least 1.3 TWR for ascent, and 2.0 for descent.

That was unintentional, I wrote that part before I realized how much time you could save while not waiting for Eve to come around. When I had a high dV burn like that with nukes going to Jool, my burn time was longer than an orbit around Kerbin. Unless of course, you were planning on putting 60 nukes to work. I may have to cap the max points on that, or toss it completely. I was thinking more along the lines of getting a perfect aerobrake so you didn't waste time making repeated aerobrakes around Eve.