AbacusWizard

I don't get it; the information about ∆v is always available in stock. It shows your craft's mass, doesn't it? It shows the engine's I_sp, doesn't it? It shows the amount of fuel remaining, doesn't it? That's ∆v.

Here's my setup. On the left is the Minmus Mobile Ore Combine, which includes eight drills, four ISRU converters, small temporary holding tanks for ore and fuel, and enough solar panels and generators to keep it all running. It's on wheels to move around (and has tiny rocket jets to fly when needed). The tapering vertical column in the center is the Engineering Bay, housing two engineers and their (KAS/KIS) equipment, which can detach and move around (on rockets or wheels) to seek out better ore deposits or make repairs. On the right is the Minmus STO Tanker, which connects to the Combine via medium docking clamps, accepts new fuel as it is produced, and, when full, takes off and orbits. Right now I'm using this to gradually fill up an utterly colossal fuel depot in low Minmus orbit; when it's full, I'll move it to medium Kerbin orbit as Midway Station Fuel Depot. I don't remember the exact numbers but I think the Minmus STO Tanker holds something like 20,000 units of liquid fuel and an equivalent quantity of oxidizer, plus 2000 monoprop. The fuel depot in orbit holds about six times that much.

I thought the "build a space station around an asteroid" missions had been around for a while now?

Easy; it's just one unit of the area under a curve on a graph whose axes are pirates and ninjas.

Spacetime is a lot easier once you realize it's just non-Euclidean.

I usually pronounce apoapsis "APP-oh-jee" and periapsis "PEAR-ih-jee."

I think solar panel arrays automatically snap off if they're extended while moving at any reasonable speed in an atmosphere, regardless of the temperature. (I learned this the hard way when I tried to use solar panels as airbrakes on a probe without a parachute that accidentally de-orbited on Eve.)

Nah, space is easy. It's when you get near a solid body that things get difficult. EDIT: ...or a star or a gas giant or whatever, but compared to empty space, those are all pretty much solid anyway.

I learned BASIC from my grandpa in the late '80s and I still use TI-BASIC to write graphing calculator programs. In fact I just wrote one the other day for calculating delta v in KSP!

Rocket science would be so much easier if all the engineers used metric.

Cuneiform? Luxury! Clay tablets? Laziness! In my day we hurled precision-aimed lightning bolts to carve runes describing our divine plans for reality into the living bedrock itself!

"Hool," obviously. It's Spanish.

You're all wrong; it should have been written in TI-BASIC.

I'm afraid it wouldn't work as is on a TI-85 (which uses a slightly different programming language than the 82/83/84 line), but it could probably be easily ported.

Airbrakes are magnificent. They're like radially mounted parachutes that can be safely deployed at high speed, and they look so cool. I put them on anything intended for reentry.

Just thought of something... an SSTO can essentially be defined as a vessel that is capable of reaching orbit without jettisoning anything except reaction mass (if it didn't jettison reaction mass, it wouldn't be a rocket in the first place). So let's say you use a solid rocket booster to get a bunch of ∆v... and then jettison the SRB, but first position yourself in such a way that you're jettisoning it in the retrograde directon, and therefore the detachment pushes you in the prograde direction. That means you're using the empty SRB as reaction mass, so technically it counts as fuel, so you're technically an SSTO! Right? Eh? Eh?

The other day I finally got tired of looking up I_sp values and typing "__*9.8*ln( __ / ( __ - 5*( __ + __ ) )" over and over again, so I decided to write a program for my graphing calculator to do it for me. The entire program is in the code block below; it should work on any TI-82/83/84 calculator. You can type it in manually or use TI Connect software (and a mini-USB cable) to transfer it directly. Let me know what you think. Menu("FUEL TYPE?","LF/OX",L,"MONOPROP",P,"SOLID",S,"XENON",X) Lbl L 1→F Menu("LF/OX ENG. SIZE?","RADIAL",R,"0.625 M",R0,"1.250 M",R1,"2.500 M",R2,"3.125 M",R3 Lbl R Menu("RADIAL ENGINE?","LV-1R SPIDER",2S,"24-77 TWITCH",2S,"MK-55 THUD",3B) Lbl R0 Menu("0.625M ENGINE?","LV-1 ANT",3D,"48-7S SPARK",3A) Lbl R1 Menu("1.250M ENGINE?","LV-909 TERRIER",3J,"T-1 AEROSPIKE",3I,"LV-T30 RELIANT",3A,"LV-T45 SWIVEL",3E,"CR-7 RAPIER",3B,"LV-N NERV ATOMIC",8A) Lbl R2 Menu("2.500M ENGINE?","POODLE",3K,"SKIPPER",3E,"MAINSAIL",3C,"KR-1X2 TW.BOAR",3A) Lbl R3 Menu("3.125M ENGINE?","KR-2L+ RHINO",3I,"KS-25X4 MAMOTH",3D) Lbl P 2→F Menu("MONOPR. ENGINE?","RCS THRUSTERS",2I,"O-10 PUFF",2K) Lbl S 3→F Menu("BOOSTER ROCKET?","SEPRATRON",1L,"RT-5 FLEA",1N,"RT-10 HAMMER",1T,"BACC THUMPER",2B,"KD25K KICKBACK",2D) Lbl X 4→F Menu("ION ENGINE?","IX-6315 DAWN",42) Lbl 1L 154→I Goto 0 Lbl 1N 165→I Goto 0 Lbl 1T 195→I Goto 0 Lbl 2B 210→I Goto 0 Lbl 2D 220→I Goto 0 Lbl 2I 240→I Goto 0 Lbl 2K 250→I Goto 0 Lbl 2S 290→I Goto 0 Lbl 3A 300→I Goto 0 Lbl 3B 305→I Goto 0 Lbl 3C 310→I Goto 0 Lbl 3D 315→I Goto 0 Lbl 3E 320→I Goto 0 Lbl 3I 340→I Goto 0 Lbl 3J 345→I Goto 0 Lbl 3K 350→I Goto 0 Lbl 8A 800→I Goto 0 Lbl 42 4200→I Goto 0 Lbl 0 0→L 0→O 0→P 0→S 0→X ClrHome Input "CURRENT MASS? ",M M*1000→M Disp "" If F=1 Then Input "LIQUID FUEL? ",L Disp "" If I≠800 Input "OXIDIZER? ",O End If F=2 Input "MONOPROP.? ",P If F=3 Input "SOLID FUEL? ",S If F=4 Input "XENON? ",X I*9.8*ln(M/(M-5*(L+O)-4*P-7.5*S-0.1*X))→V ClrHome Disp "","","DELTA V:",iPart(V)," M/S","" Pause Goto 0 When the calculator runs the program, it should display a menu asking what type of fuel you're using, then submenus asking which engine your ship has. After selecting an engine, you will be asked for the current mass of your ship (in tonnes) and the quantity of each relevant type of fuel. It should then output your ship's total ∆v available. It includes all the stock engines and adding more should be pretty easy. (Moderators: I figured this seemed the most reasonable place to put this thread; feel free to move it elsewhere if that would make more sense.)

I went there a couple of times in previous versions--once with a crew lander for the sake of completionism, and once with two uncrewed rovers (with jump jets) so I could drive around in the big canyon and try some Evel Kernievel style stunts off the cliffs. Haven't been back since then but I would like to check out the dresteroids sometime.

Now that's what I call sending the old version off with a bang!

What I'd really like to see is bags or tubs of little plastic kerbalnauts--somewhere around the size, quality, and (ideally) price of the classic "little green army men." Or, y'know, somewhat higher quality (and price); that'd be good too. Mainly I want a bunch of them to station around my office.

They were planning to call it Drestralia.

Eh, yeah, but on a long trip, maneuvers should be few and far between, so you'd have plenty of time to run calculations during periods of zero acceleration.

Did the transition from 1.0.3 to 1.0.4 make any changes other than fixing the heatshield-prevents-existing-craft-from-loading-properly bug? (I fixed my one affected craft manually and I'm wondering if I should bother updating.)

At first glance I misread that as "fly 1 meter above the ground" and freaked out a bit. Not exactly my preferred landing approach!

Part of it is that sliding beads around (once you've had some practice) is WAY faster than writing down numerals. It also encourages use of various shortcuts (e.g. instead of adding 8, you could add 10--a single bead in the next column over--and subtract 2), which at first seem a nuisance, but once you get the hang of it they speed up calculations so much you'll find yourself doing them in your head even when you don't have an abacus in your hands. I admit I do still use pencil and paper for long division, because I personally find the division method on the abacus to be somewhat cumbersome and easy to lose track of place value--but for addition, subtraction, and multiplication, the abacus is superb.