GoSlash27

I was born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA and we have a dialect/ vocabulary that's unique to us. Explanation and translation examples from a similarly- afflicted "yinzer" Best, -Slashy [edit] Oops! Forgot to mention; it's "pop". [/edit]

Truthfully, it doesn't matter much for what you're trying to do. Your plane will be more maneuverable with the engines tucked in, but you don't want an attack plane to be too maneuverable or it will make an unstable weapons platform. Best, -Slashy

That moment when you go to add another strut to the assembly and remove said assembly (and any dependent subassemblies) because you forgot to click the part in the menu first.

My √0.02... KSP isn't entirely realistic and it isn't entirely fanciful either, but it *is* pretty fun. I saw a thread the other day where a bunch of kids were discussing Hohmann transfers, delta-v budgets, and Oberth effect. This video game seems to be creating a new generation of aerospace engineers, and I think that's neat as hell. I'd personally prefer upping the realism, but not at the expense of game play. The important thing seems to be that people play and learn something about rocket science in the process. Best, -Slashy

Whatever you do, don't taunt it! -Slashy

Red Iron, I'll skip the obvious stuff, as I know you've probably already covered that. The one thing that stands out to me is the wing sweep caused by attaching them to a surface that's not aligned with the centerline. In my experience, the stock aerodynamics engine does care about that. If I understand the game physics, the lift vector is rotated outboard on each wing, causing a dynamic instability in yaw. Hope that's it! -Slashy

Have you folks seen any out-of-the-mainstream sci-fi tv shows worth watching? The 100 looks pretty decent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM_2LwEtgkg

It doesn't make any sense intuitively, so it's just not you. You *do* have a potential energy advantage up there, but unless you convert that potential energy to kinetic energy, you may as well not bother, because the potential energy itself is worthless in interplanetary transfers. The Oberth effect is gained IRT Kerbin's inertial frame, while the benefit is reaped IRT Kerbol's inertial reference. I look at it this way: The height advantage of near-SOI orbits is really nil in Kerbol system scale. What matters is velocity. Say you need 4,500 m/sec (on top of Kerbin's 9,300) to set up a Hohmann transfer to Jool. At LKO, you've already got 2,300 of it. Up at the edge of SOI, you've only got 220 (assuming you're in a circular orbit). It would be a huge disadvantage to burn from up there to make up the lost velocity... *but* if you spend 200 m/s to get you down to LKO in a highly elliptical orbit, then once you get there, you're booking along at about 3,500 m/sec. Put another way... getting a payload to Jool is work. Work is thrust applied over a distance. If you nail a rocket to a tree and light it, it provides thrust but does no work, because all of it's chemical potential energy is expended in accelerating propellant out the back. None of the potential energy applies to the *real* work of accelerating the rocket itself. Likewise, if the rocket is travelling at a high velocity, pretty much all of it's potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, resulting in more work accomplished. The faster the rocket is going, the more work it can do with it's conversion of potential chemical energy into kinetic energy. Best, -Slashy

Question: Why not assemble it in Munar orbit instead and ditch the engine? There's lots of ways to skin a cat, but FWIW this is how I do it. Curious, -Slashy

This does actually work out to be roughly correct, and it's due to the Oberth effect. But as cantab mentioned, once you're up at the edge of the SOI and refueled (which effectively resets the clock) slingshotting from Kerbin* makes it cheaper. A lot of the time, the total fuel expended in the mission is far less important than the DV required to complete a single leg of a mission. [edit] It only really takes 200 m/sec or so to get from a circular SOI orbit to an LKO periapsis, so your trip to Jool would only cost about 1,200 m/sec from up there instead of the usual 2,000. Even less if you can catch the Mun on your way out and slingshot from it. [/edit] *It's not technically a "slingshot", but rather gaining a whole lot of velocity for cheap in order to make use of the Oberth effect at periapsis... Best, -Slashy

I start my gravity kick earlier than most here; 7 KM. I then let it rotate slowly and try to hit the following marks: 68* pitch at 15KM 45* pitch at 25KM 30* pitch at 35KM Best, -Slashy

I'd recommend edge of the SOI; circular orbit of 70 million meters and follow cantab's suggestion. You can save even more DV if you use the mun to slingshot you. Best, -Slashy

I designed a system to do exactly this job. Not for this challenge, but because it seemed the best way to go for generic colonization. I use Tylo 5.0SS rovers to descend to the surface with the hab modules as payload... Traverse to the build site and assemble the hab modules in place. It's all modular. clockwise from lower left, a pair of hab modules with a docked rover, a pair of rovers linked to a lander can to serve as rover/lander/ ascent vehicle, and the specialized Eve lander. -Slashy

A picture is worth a thousand words -Slashy

No harm, no foul. I missed what you were actually referring to, and yes... it's frustrating. Scientists and engineers tend to do that too. It's because they're trying to convey a very specific concept using a very imprecise language. Best, -Slashy

With you on pretty much all of this, but I disagree with the "cryptic and ambiguous" part. Math is not cryptic, it's just another language. And the beauty of it is that it is completely unambiguous in what it says. In this case, every job you have in this game can be quantified in "delta-V" Getting into orbit requires such-and-such meters/sec. Going to the Mun requires such-and-such meters/sec. Etc. The equation merely says that the DV a rocket can produce is directly proportional to it's specific impulse and the natural log of it's wet/dry ratio. Simplified, it's really just a matter of having an efficient engine and having enough of your rocket be fuel instead of not-fuel. That's really the entire trick to how we do what we're doing. But math, being entirely logical and unambiguous, allows us to do a lot more than that. Algebra allows us to restate the sentence to answer other questions, such as "if I need to do this job (stated in m/sec of DV) and I'm using this engine to deliver that payload... how much fuel (and thus tanks) do I need". Or which engine/ fuel combo will accomplish this job with the least overall mass, etc. The rocket equation isn't *everything*, but it's most of it. Best, -Slashy

Honestly... I think we've wandered pretty far off the original topic. Not sayin' you're wrong Pecan, but AFAICS staging has nothing to do with how people are pulling off missions with tiny rockets. Intelligently designed staging, optimal flight paths, accurate piloting... yeah, all that stuff contributes to a successful mission and I'm not claiming otherwise. *But* AFA how you get really far with a tiny rocket, the bulk of it is 1) understanding the rocket equation 2) using it to plan your mission and design your launch vehicle, and 3) ruthlessly eliminating dead weight. The rest of that stuff is part of the job also... but it's not part of *this* part of the job (if you catch my meaning). Best and no feather-ruffling intended, -Slashy

Same thing everyone else here has said; they're heavy, weak, and have really crappy efficiency in atmosphere. Naturally, you want to use them in situations where you're in vacuum and don't need a lot of thrust, but are looking for good efficiency. As with every other rocket, the key to good DV isn't so much how big the rocket is, but rather how much of your rocket is fuel. Best, -Slashy

#1) right click on your ailerons and set them so that they are not responding to pitch and yaw inputs. #2) put a little dihedral in your wings so they naturally tend to seek level flight #3) make sure your nose is a little higher than your tail so you're generating lift at takeoff That should get you off the ground in one piece. After that... we'll see what we see. Best, -Slashy

Yeah, not nit-picking your response. It's all good information. I'm just pointing out that the DV equation isn'y all that difficult to understand and work with and it's worth anyone's time to become adept at using it if they want to be successful. Best, -Slashy

^ I pretty much fully agree with 5thHorseman, with one point of contention: delta-vee is not all that complex a topic, and is the key to making all of this work. Pretty much everything in this game is a matter of changes in velocity (DV in m/sec) and acceleration rates (m/sec^2). If you can sort out the math, then you can accomplish just about anything. And the math isn't all that hard once you get the hang of it. The little that remains is just planning, organization, and piloting. The important thing (at least the way that I do it) is to design your missions backwards with a careful eye towards doing each step the job with as little mass as possible. Good luck! -Slashy

If that's the case, a ginormous mega-carrier is a much more daunting task than simply landing a shuttle. -Slashy

Small payloads. -Slashy

Even better question: Why bother landing on the water at all? You're in orbit and can land anywhere you want. Makes more logistical sense to land back at base rather than in the middle of some ocean.

Like this. Of course.. landings usually have payload I'm bringing to a surface, so it usually looks more like this: -Slashy