Archgeek

Not quite, you forgot the 4 significant digits. 2.789 * 299792458m/s should be rounded to 863100000m/s. Roughly. *suffers flashback to highschool chem class*

Roughly. Likely a case of a vast decimal rounded to 4 siggies for sanity.

Sounds like for disposables the way to go might be a well-tuned, dense, payload of ore and a nosecone atop a carefully tweaked kickback. Possibly with a flea-based PAM for circularization. Heck, if you're gonna PAM, you could go partially disposable -- toss a couple of chutes on the kickback, get the apo a decent ways into the future, splash down the kickback, then pop the PAM near apo. Perhaps the amusingly low-drag (and fairly cheap, I think?) juno intake could be leveraged nosecone-ways.

Yup, it's a goodly chunk bigger than the Jool system, but not 10x the size. Conveniently, there's about 300 Mm in a light-second, and Pol's apoapsis is only 210.624207 of 'em, less than the semi-major axis of Trappist-1 b, which orbits at 5.555 ls or 1666.5 Mm, but more than a 10th of it. Bop's orbit would still be just inside a 1/10th-scale Trappist-1 b's, though. Numbers are weird enough that these three conversions are pretty good for thinking about scale: 500 ls/AU (seriously, almost exactly 499) 150 Gm/AU (almost exactly 149.6, what) 300 Mm/ls (almost exactly 299.7996, this is getting out of hand) Amusingly, this means the 12 Mm distance to the Mun would result in a nearly imperceptible .04s signal delay with Mission Control.

Hehehe, yup: relevant forum thread. It can be done with stock parts, preferably with the help of Kerbal Alarm Clock to avoid having to babysit burns. That link goes to a post regarding some monster I created, having taken the problem as a bit of a challenge, but you may find the whole thread relevant to your interests.

Real should suffice. That system is dang tiny -- converting the orbital distances to light-seconds (any Elite: Dangerous players will be able to get a feel from these, I just multiplied the AU given on the wiki page by 500, but there's actually 499 per AU): planet semi-major axis in light-seconds b 5.555 c 7.61 d 10.5 ± 3 e 14 f 18.5 g 22.5 h 31.5 +13 -6.5 Of significant note, Moho orbits at 17.5559 ls, and Kerbin at 45.364. Real scale should do just fine.

No no, no one's shooting a nuclear shaped charge at them -- they're using a nuclear shaped charge to shoot a disk of tungsten plasma at them.

Actually, in 1.2 you can promote kerbs in the mobile processing lab. Also, there's an option in the settings for full-on field promotions.

HEH, 'almost looks like a kerbal HAARP if you squint. KAARP?

HehEhEHe, that's the thing with xenon, long burn times, but you get there faster. I can see that the first launch pad was an Estes model, before it caught fire; I wonder if they were using igniters and the little electric remote launch button. I've got one old enough that it uses a metal key and an incandescent light bulb for an arming light. Hmm, C engines breaking stuff. Estes again? I've an Alpha III and a half and a Code Red rocket from back in the day, and never once did I have a C launch that didn't in some way damage the craft. First C launch on my first Alpha III snapped the shock cord and detached the whole recovery module, leaving the rocket to plummet to earth and the nose to float off to parts unknown. The Code Red was a tougher design, but the first C launch still partially melted the plastic screw-on cap they used for holding the engine in (instead of that metal clip on the Alpha III), and the second, in spite of double wadding, ripped three of the lines out of the chute. Moral of the story: Cs break stuff, Bs might stand for "Best".

Heheh, I've not either, but just have a looksee at one of the threads grousing about Ike causing craft loss. Among the laments can be found rescue contracts that run into Ike and either get kicked into a solar orbit, into Duna, or just slam into Ike itself.

Actually, the rockets themselves were called Kerbals. They were made using powder from unlit fireworks. The little foil astronauts all had the surname "Kerman", and seemed to be questing to reach some place called "Allumminnia". See the original "Kerbo Log": Man this link gets posted a lot around here.

Ah, rescue contract on a collision course then? Say you take a contract to rescue a kerbal stuck in Duna orbit, send you rescue craft off that-a-way, and find out that sometime in the next few months, just before you'll get there, the poor clod's gonna slam into Ike? There's less than one month left before impact, so, high-energy transfers to the rescue! Just build an ion-powered beast (with some fuel cells for braking, at that distance) and send it ripping off to the aid of the imperiled kerbal, getting there in weeks instead of months. Upshot being that unreasonably large delta-v can come in handy if there's ever an equally unreasonable time constraint in play. Granted, the example in question would require you to've nearly o'ertopped the tech tree without having a functioning and ready craft already at Duna or Ike, even if only a powered probe that could at least bump the poor sod off their Ike-crossing course. Though, that's just not as fun as a high-energy transfer in a specially built emergency rescue vehicle.

What of high-energy transfers? If you need something to get somewhere faster than normal, packing on more DV and taking an otherwise sub-optimal route can do the trick nicely. Great for when a life-support-enabled mission is jeopardized and supplies need to be sent fast. TWR's not much of a problem -- just use KAC and your aunt's gone and married Bob for some reason.

Yup, if you're okay with low TWR (just over .02 at worst), you can squeeze over 100km/s in just over 170 tonnes. Hours-long stages, but just use 4x timewarp and KAC alarms set to pause the game, then all is good. 'Don't know the part count exactly, but my notes say that's 275 tanks of various sizes.

The absolute monster of a 100km/s ion craft for my Eve brachistochrone shot aims for 4.5km/s per stage, which comes to a mass ratio of 1.23 between stages.

Indeed, so long as they actually stayed in symmetry. I wanna try a nose cone with 8 radials on it radially attached in 8x symmetry to an ore tank and see how that does.

Ah, but were they all in teired symmetry with eachother? This n^1.5 shenanigan seems to take place within symmetry groups alone.

Goodness. I wonder if nested symmetries count. Consider 8 chutes in symmetry around a part that is then itself placed in 8x symmetry, resulting in a total of 64 chutes, and if it stacks, fully 512 chutes equivalent. This could be altogether out of hand.

A single-shot, 2-kerbal Eve return lander I'd designed with a friend some versions before the aero overhaul made it all the way to the surface with Bill and Roley Kerman, and seemed set to actually make the ascent--as the custom legs, which clearly had a design flaw, had managed to hold out in Eve's gravity: Even the carefully designed and over complicated ladder system to get down and up via actually worked. However, upon liftoff, something was clearly wrong, as the ship gently floated downward on its skipper engines, eventually going up just before the next stage. 'Turns out that though we'd designed the thing nicely and it made quite a decent Duna ship on its own, we'd used KER to do the number crunching, and it had quietly remained set on Kerbin TWR, so the nice 1.4 we were reading, was more like .8. Later analysis showed the dang thing would've worked if the first stage had used a pair of mainsails instead of two more skippers.

But...what about @NecroBones's Burger mod? Sure, it's got a farting ketchup NTR, but also has radially-attached bacon!

Or Universal Extractor, for those weird formats.

From whenever I start playing to around 4-4:30 in the morning. Every. Stinking. Time. I've actually not played all that much of late, due to fear of the time-sink effect on my sleep schedule.

When you watch things like Apollo 13 and wonder why they didn't just pop timewarp on and off, realize "Oh yeah, NASA uses Persistent Rotation.", then realize real life doesn't have mods and that your entire line of thought has been silly.

About that. I'm more than a bit certain you can do the same with Eve, and possibly Duna. I've got a little project (working title: Gotta Eve Fast) involving hucking a probe at Eve via brachistochrone, using ions with panels spec'ed for expected insolation as the distance to the sun dwindles for after turn-around, and an as-yet undesigned nuke stage for the first half of the trip. I think the design TWR is closer to .02, but that's not exactly the worst when working with such crazy mass ratios. 'Point is, I think it's pretty doable in stock.