Norcalplanner

As promised, here are some helpful links which discuss this issue: SRB discussion from my tutorial. This was done back in 1.0.4, so it's a bit out of date. Based on some more recent testing, I wouldn't recommend thrust limiting SRBs as much. I now shoot for an initial TWR between 1.5 and 1.9. The Cheap and Cheerful Rocket Payload Challenge. This was back in 1.0.5, but it showed just how cheaply payloads could be lofted to orbit, in most cases by using clusters of Kickbacks. Many entries were under 700 funds/ton. A select few were under 600 funds/ton. Here's a good launch video showing a 617 funds/ton design by maccallo. A Degree Makes a Difference - or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Drag and Concentrate on Gravity Losses. This is a recent 1.1.3 thread where I look at the effects of different TWRs and ascent profiles in RSS. I ended up coming around to the "crank it over as hard as you can so long as you still make orbit and don't burn up in the atmosphere" school of thought. Gravity losses are at least an order of magnitude greater than aerodynamic drag losses. FAR changed things a bit, but not as much as I thought it would.

Wow, this thread is squarely in my wheelhouse. Sorry I didn't see it before now. Check out the tutorial link in my signature for lots of tips and tricks for Cheap and Cheerful rocket design (such as omitting fins due to their cost). When I get to a real computer, I'll post some links to other threads, including my recent cost-per-ton of payload to orbit challenge, and some tests where I examined various TWRs and ascent profiles.

At the risk of being a NecroBones fanboy, I have to put in a plug for the SRBs in SpaceY. Most of them have gimbaling nozzles, just like the real STS SRBs. You can avoid fins and still have great attitude control with a low cost solid first stage.

Congratulations on the new gig, @nightingale! Well done!

Lots of Poodles - love it. And welcome aboard!

Looks like this is an updated version of one of my challenges from last year. Good luck!

So I'm enjoying this in an RSS career, and I've now completed probe missions to Mars, Venus, and (after many tries) Mercury. The next logical step for probes would seem to be Jupiter's moons, but the only probe strategy is for Jupiter itself. The strategy further requires probes to land on Jupiter, which is going to be extremely difficult for a gas giant. Is there any way for Strategia to detect which planets are gas giants, then apply something like the Jool V special strategy to send you to that planet's moons instead? If it's too difficult, don't worry about it - I still haven't sent Kerbals any further than the Moon, so Mars and Venus will keep them occupied for quite a while.

Today I used this method to successfully get to Mercury in RSS for the first time, getting a gravity brake off of Venus. I had a monster ship with 26 km/s of delta V taking a large satellite and three landers (in part to fulfill a Strategia contract) and had repeated failures with a direct Hohman transfer. I'd arrive with 8 km/s left in the tank, and the capture burn would be 15 km/s. Using a gravity brake off of Venus, I arrived with 11 km/s in the tank, and the capture burn was only 6 km/s. So my massive rocket (over 10,000 tons) which was woefully insufficient for a direct journey to Mercury, was grossly overbuilt when using a Venus assist. Definitely some of the most difficult yet satisfying gameplay I've had in quite a while.

Or you can use one of my favorite tricks, which is attaching a nose cone to a docking port on the pointy end of the rocket. You can ditch the nose cone before your circularization burn to minimize unneeded orbital mass, but still enjoy the beneficial aero during the launch. I'd also like to suggest using the C7 tapered fuel tank, which adds aerodynamic benefits for the same mass and price as the Rockomax 8.

Just want to put in a plug for NecroBones' Real Scale Boosters mod. In addition to Kerbalized versions of a bunch of real world rockets, it also includes some from Eyes Turned Skywards and some which were never built. I used some of these latter parts to make this ridiculous thing... Three 12.2m Nova cores plus 14 Ariane V SRBs equals 892 tons to a 250 km orbit in RSS.

I'd be happy to help if you provide a picture of the rocket.

@NecroBones I've really enjoyed all your mods. Recently, I've been playing RSS with SMURFF (no RO) and started to use a few pieces of Real Scale Boosters. Then I decided that if a little is good, a lot must be better. I hereby proudly present, courtesy of your mod.... The Nova Heavy. http://imgur.com/a/SWlBX I think if I used the Delta naming convention this would be the Nova Heavy+(10,14). Long story short, I was able to put an 892 ton fuel depot into a 250 km orbit in RSS. Thank you for making this wonderfully ludicrous monstrosity possible. Edit - I'm afraid that imgur and I aren't getting along today. You'll have to click on the link to see the rest of the pictures.

Consider adding Engine Lighting to the above.

Agreed. If we can get everything up with MJ using mechjeb and engineer for all, then we uninstall those two mods, confirm that everything is working, then send you that save, is that acceptable? Or does it truly need to be 100% vanilla the whole time?

Well, you can simulate it pretty well by engaging SAS and adjusting your attitude manually during the ascent. Takes a bit more work though.

I should have clarified that I don't use the stock buttons - I always use the SmartASS buttons in MechJeb. Much cleaner/smoother/better with more options, like being able to lock to surface velocity prograde plus or minus any number of degrees in any axis. Very useful in RSS when you have a low TWR upper stage, so you can tell SmartASS to add +15 degrees to your prograde hold.

Flames on ascent = harmless Temperature gauges = getting close to harm Exploding parts = slow down Seriously, I did a whole series of tests in the thread below, and reached some significant conclusions. I just ran some more tests tonight in a stock system size, and the conclusions are largely the same - namely, launch between a TWR of 1.5 and 1.9, and crank it over hard (10+ degrees) as soon as you leave the pad at higher TWRs, then switch to prograde lock.

I'd add Landing Height, Kerbal Joint Reinforcement, and Portrait Stats for certain. If you're a rocket person instead of a spaceplane person, I'd recommend most of Necrobones' stuff - SpaceY, SpaceY Expanded, Fuel Tanks Plus, and Color Coded Canisters. These mods allow larger and/or better looking rockets with lower part counts than stock.

I'm currently finding it worthwhile in RSS to mine fuel on the Moon, connect an EVA fuel line to my LV-N powered fuel tanker, then take the fuel up to my orbital Moon station. It's not refueling anything going interplanetary, but it means that ships from earth can arrive with nearly empty tanks, grab some fuel from the station, and then burn for home again when it's time. This setup also powers all the exploration I'm doing to various Moon biomes, so the science landers and personnel shuttles can be used over and over again.

Thanks for linking to the other thread. Just to echo and expand on what Snark said, the need for massive and complicated staging schemes is a thing of the past. It's entirely possible to make practical rockets using stock parts which fly nicely and still have lots of delta V. Here are two examples I did half a year ago, but the aero has remained essentially the same: Both of the above examples were before my recent revelations regarding TWR and minimizing gravity losses. If I had to redo these rockets today, I wouldn't be thrust limiting the kickbacks. One thing to keep in mind with the stock aero model is that radially-mounted parts now add significantly to drag, as do parts of mismatched diameters (such as putting a 1.25m engine beneath a 2.5m fuel tank. Struts and fuel lines now have a lot of drag, and the blunt nose cones are a lot worse than the advanced ones. If you're launching a bunch of unaerodynamic satellites, then the solution is to put them all beneath a fairing. It's also possible to stack satellites using jr. docking ports or stack separators - here's an example I used in the guide posted in my sig.

I think part of the confusion may be that the small icons for the 5m and 7.5m fairings look very different from the icons for the stock fairings.

There's also a mod called landing height which changes the altimeter to show the distance above the current terrain when in surface mode.

Does anyone know if Stage Recovery can be tweaked to play nicer with RSS in 1.1.3? It's working OK right now, but all my stages are stated as being recovered more than 3000 km from KSC (the real one), with a corresponding reduction in recovery value percentage. Is this a diameter of the planet issue?

Finished up my Mars probe mission in RSS, with landers in three different biomes on Mars, landers on both Phobos and Deimos, and a massive satellite in a Martian polar orbit. Next up - working on my lunar surface base and associated infrastructure.

Here's an album of my Bluebird craft in its 6.4x variant. This is just about the only use I have for the Twitch engine.