Riph

Bwahaha. If you think that's ugly, you should see my craft that aren't designed for atmosphere. Bare metal efficiency makes for some damned ugly rockets.

Totally. I didn't include one here because I know people prefer a wide variety of small, medium, and large ports. My personal preference would probably be a pair of docking port jrs mounted to each of the sides.

My spacecraft stay in orbit forever, getting reused over and over until they're obsolete. This saves a ton of money over detaching the command pod and landing it (and junking everything else.) The obvious problem however is how to get kerbals and data back home. For years now I've been trying to build the holy grail of crew rotation transports, which for me is a craft that is the following: Gets to orbit and precisely back to KSC with no staging or discarded parts. Carries at least 4 kerbals as passengers (can operate with 0). Is bloody effortless to fly, takes off vertically, lands vertically with parachutes. I am a rocket scientist, not a jet pilot. Has no wings. See #3 for why. (Some may remember my previous thread about my troubled relationship with wings.) Vanilla parts. I believe at last I have done so. Behold, the Air Taxi. This thing is so easy to fly it brings tears to my eyes. Crew rotation and science recovery have never been easier. I felt compelled to share.

I can still get into orbit. ..but I use 95% of my fuel in doing so and can't get to the Mun anymore. This is quite the change from my earlier Joolian adventures!

Better late that never, but I need to take some time and apologize to LethalDose. I made a snarky remark at zerotwo's math, since he was adding the cost of a decoupler to every RT-10 and then concluding that the RT-10 was too expensive. Lethaldose read the remark and thought I was telling him his rocket design was 'doing it wrong'. That was not my intention, and it just goes to show how shooting your mouth off can have unintended consequences. My bad.

Point conceded on part count. I'm playing a new game right now and have yet to hit the 30 piece limit, but I am coming close. However, cost was actually covered in the OP. The RT-10s are cheaper. And if you're putting a decoupler on every booster, then you're doing it wrong. See the pic I posted, an unlimited number of boosters can ride on one decoupler.

Speaking of easy to slap on, I think from now on every rocket I send up will be riding on some variant of this: Need more thrust? Stack more radially outward. Need more burn time? Stack more radially outward and then tune their thrust limiter down.

I've been trying to really fine-tune my first ascent stage, and when I broke down the numbers I saw something kind of odd. Consider this very basic comparison of two RT-10 SRBs vs one BACC. Remember that the BACC is the higher tech option and requires science to unlock. [TABLE=width: 500, align: left] [TR] [TD]RT-10s[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Cost[/TD] [TD]325[/TD] [TD]x2[/TD] [TD]650[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Thrust[/TD] [TD]250[/TD] [TD]x2[/TD] [TD]500[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Fuel (tons)[/TD] [TD]3.25[/TD] [TD]x2[/TD] [TD]6.5[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Engine (dead weight, tons)[/TD] [TD]0.4975[/TD] [TD]x2[/TD] [TD]0.995[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]isp[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]225[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]BACC[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Cost[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]700[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Thrust[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]315[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Fuel[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]6.37[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]Engine[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]1.505[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD]isp[/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD]230[/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [TD][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] So unless I'm missing something huge, the more advanced unit is getting me 5 isp in exchange for being heavier, having less fuel, less thrust, more dead weight, and being more expensive. Five points of isp can't possibly make up for a half ton of additional dead weight, can it? Since you can stack RT-10s radially outward on to infinity, and tune the thrust limiter exactly how you like, is there any scenario in which the BACC is desired?

Kerbal is a fantastic sandbox so don't listen to anyone who tells you that a given way is the wrong way. That said, if you're a beginner, what you probably want is the most simple way, until you've learned enough to get fancy. The most simple way is to keep only your main engine turned on for that portion of the tutorial, that way your vectors and the navball agree

Also mechjeb is cheating

My solution is to do exactly the same thing you do when trying to make two spacecraft encounter each other, for example to dock a lander to an orbiter. Here is a plan for Duna: Step one: Escape Kerbin orbit. You are now in a circular orbit around the sun very similar to Kerbin's orbit. Step two: Target Duna and match it's inclination (via the ascending and descending nodes.) DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP. Step three: Burn prograde at your periapsis to push your apoapsis out until it is TANGENT TO DUNA's ORBIT. Observe that the 'next encounter position' markers have appeared in your orbit path and Duna's orbit path. Step four: Watch the next encounter position markers. Since your apoapsis is tangent to duna, but your periapsis is not, you are on a SHORTER ORBIT than Duna, therefore you are circling the sun faster than it is. This means that your orbits will eventualyl SYNCRONIZE. Fast forward until your orbits are nearly syncronized. Step five: Start using maneuver nodes AT YOUR APOAPSIS ONLY and find a prograde burn that simultaniously pushes your periapsis out to make your orbit match Duna's, and also encounter Duna. This may take several revolutions. If any of this is baffling to you, practice docking orbiters and landers around Mun or Minmus. The procedure is essentially identical, and those moons are a much friendlier and more fuel efficient place to practice.

Thank you so much, this is exactly what I was looking for. All this information should be posted to the wiki. (Unless it already is, but I sure couldn't find it there.)

Actually you can do so quite easily by flying over your target, deploying chutes, and powered landing carefully to guide your fall. This design assumes zero wind (which KSP has.. for now..) and also a kerbal nearby who can magically 'repack' those chutes with zero complications from this act. (Which KSP has. For now.) This... seems like magic to me, but I'm no rocket scientist. Thank you for actually answering the question However, now I have to ask, is this in real world physics only? Or does this work in KSP as well? So far my experiments with wings tend to end in less efficient flights, but this could because I'm doing it wrong.

Peter1981 just gave an awesome and factual answer to why we should use air-breathing engines. It was a good read and I honestly feel bad saying this but uh.. what about the wings? The question was about wings. Nobody's arguing that air engines aren't awesome, I use them all the time. My "big dumb boosters" are air breathing.

Can you explain this in better detail? My (totally uneducated) assumption was that an engine with 100 thrust units, with wings, pointed horizontally east, is generating something like 90 acceleration units east (due to wing drag), and 10 acceleration units up (due to lift). Acceleration can't magically come from nowhere, so it'd have to be converted from horizontal to vertical. Right? Since I can simply point my nose upward at a 9 degree angle (9 is 10% of 90 degrees), I can achieve the same effect (90 east, 10 up). I'm sure someone can poke a massive hole in my assumptions here, and that's what I want. I want to know how this stuff works.

So before I start off I need to preface this by saying that this is a serious question, inspired by all the really awesome new parts in 0.25. I am not trolling and I am not doing that Socratic method thing where you ask stupid questions in order to guide someone else. Furthermore I have hundreds of hours logged and have put all kinds of crazy junk into orbit and beyond. Serious question: What are wings for? No really. Why would I want something adding more drag and mass only to convert some of my always useful forward velocity into not always useful radial-out velocity? Mass which is always slowing me down (unless I jettison the wings when I reach space, which makes sense, but then why not jettison them on the launch pad? And that radial-out is a best case scenario, assuming you've perfectly aligned your CoL with your CoM. Otherwise it turns into unwanted rotation. Did I mention that your CoM is constantly moving due to fuel consumption?) So, why wings? The smartass answer is, of course, that you need lift in order to not smash into the ground. And maybe for Orville and Wilbur Wright, this was the case. But I have access to reaction wheels and more thrust than the Wrights could have dreamed of. Consider this 'spaceplane': Has airbreathing engines and also vacuum engines, can fly in atmosphere, can fly in space. I just did it, stable orbit with fuel to spare. What I can do, that Wilbur couldn't, is freely adjust my angle of attack. This ugly beast 'flies' at a 30-45 degree angle, easily shrugging off the forces of gravity that would have required wings in the past. Now have a look at this thing. Be careful, looking directly at it may cause nausea. I especially like the mis-rotated ram intakes. Classy. This is how I put pretty much all my heavy cargo into orbit. Airbreathers get it up to about 30km, then detachable SRBs get it the rest of the way. There's nineteen turbojets on here, and zero wings. Lands with parachutes, gets recovered about 50km from KSC at a 95% refund. I'd like to improve my designs. People seem to like wings. Help me understand why. Pictures and graphs might help, I guess I'm stupid because this is not obvious to me at all.

For those of us who use lots of air breathing engines but never install wings, the Shock Cone Intake is by far the best part of 0.25. (Except maybe Outsourced R&D. Getting 4000 science from a flight is pretty cool.) But you may be squinting at its stats and thinking, "Seems better than the Ram Air Intake. But I have no idea how much better." Well my friend, I can tell you. It's 2.6 percent better. How do I know? Because this drone... ..flew to an altitude of 249,310m with the old Ram intakes, and flew to 256,007m with the new Shock Cone. Science!

I decided to answer my own question. I went with option 2, the wheeled rover fuel tanker. However, the CLAWs are mounted on the rover, not the refinery. Here is a picture. The center of gravity is way too high, and it must be driven with great care or it will flip itself in the low gravity. However that's not all bad news. It's built like a spaceship and flies and orbits very easily. Here is the refinery design I went with. Initial designs actually had way more solar power, but I misunderstood the power requirements of the Large Refinery module. The hundreds of power per second it lists as consuming is only if you max out its refining capability. This would require something like 9 large drills to accomplish. Long story short, it actually eats way less power than you think. I'm quite happy with my results. Minmus is now a fueling station for all my ships to top off at before setting out into the cosmos. This has dramatically simplified my launch designs, since 'enough fuel to get to minmus' and 'enough fuel to get to moho' are very, very different amounts. Particularly when you have to haul all that crap upward through Kerbin's 1.0 gravity.

I ended up with AGUs on the rover, it helps it dock to ships in orbit as well, so it does double duty. One of my early prototypes had AGUs on the refinery, and I experienced no physics failures in my tests. I'm glad for the warning though, I'll be careful with this configuration in the future.

This remains the case, it has not changed.

Landed my first refinery on Minmus. Unfortunately it appears that https://github.com/Majiir/Kethane/issues/139 has recurred. My drills are dipping deeper than the resource box for the kethane, and so they don't work unless my lander hops up in the air a half meter. I've temporarily worked around this by changing the rescale factor of kethane_heavyDrill in order to make my drills smaller. In the future I'll just mount them higher up on the lander :/ Edit: Pictures

Why not just have Advanced Grabbing Units sticking out of the sides of the refinery? That way I can drive a rover tanker of any height up to it.

Stock solutions preferred where possible. Kethane is the only mod I've installed so far (other than a brief stint with Mechjeb, didn't like it). It looks like Galane's solution is to make the refinery itself leave the surface and orbit to meet the hungry ships. Have most people gone this route? It certainly simplifies distribution, though I'd be concerned about how much fuel is being wasted hauling all that extra equipment up and down.

Normally I'd read the thread for ideas, but 505 pages makes it a bit opaque. Recently installed Kethane, enjoying it, ready to plop down my first refinery on the Mun to make it into a refueling station for voyages beyond. During my design phase, I realized that I don't really have a solid procedure in mind for getting the newly minted fuel from the refinery on the ground to the hungry ships in orbit. Here are my ideas so far: 1) A go-between ship with a big fuel tank with a CLAW on the bottom which can land directly on top of the refinery for fuel transfers. Pros: Simple, east to construct. Cons: Landing on a tiny refinery will take some leet piloting skills, and will get frustrating if I have to do it over and over. 2) A go-between ship with a big fuel tank and wheels on the bottom, which can land anywhere near the refinery, drive up to it, and engage the CLAWs which would be installed on the sides of the refinery. Pros: Super easy operation. Cons: Engineering a tanker truck that drives on the Mun without the wheels falling off or flipping over has been a challenge. Also the wheels and structural material they require make for a heavier tanker, resulting in inefficient fuel trips. Please post what has worked for you to help me brainstorm.

You have it exactly right, Mister Spock. The orange tank has a docking clamp (I like the Sr model) on each side, such that one side gets docked to my nuke tug, and the other can be driven straight into an open port on the space station. Here is a picture of one such tug from a prior conversation: http://cloud-4.steampowered.com/ugc/580151430942899249/6D9B1A47E4AC80D0705CAB7306B8A84E3BAA5672/ Now that funds are out, the four LV-Ns on that model are a bit excessive. But, because this thing will orbit and work for you forever, it will pay for itself in time. You could use fewer engines for more efficiency, but you'd have boring slow burns, and boring is not the kerbal solution. Also note the giant SAS wheel on the tug. Fuel tanks are heavy, and you'll need lots of torque from reaction wheels or RCS if you want to move them effectively.