Starman4308

I was playing with a hypothetical 6.4x design where both stages shared the same Rockomax 48-7S engine and only eliminated extra fuel tanks: I think I had four radially-decoupled FL-T200 tanks with fuel lines into the ascent stage. I know I had to change things up a bit because I added a Science Jr. and the additional 200 kg left me short on dV. And just to be clear: I'm pretty sure my 9.2 km/s value is coming from stock drag, with 8.2 km/s coming out of NEAR with a terrible launch profile (it was exactly the third successful orbital launch I've ever done using NEAR).

I was wondering how you got that figure. I required ~9.2 km/s dV to get to orbit. I have discovered step 1 to troubleshooting this process: "Ensure FAR/NEAR installed correctly". I tested my NEAR installation with a couple rockets in sandbox: both are a Rockmax-16 tank feeding a Skipper, but one had 6 radially arranged, empty Rockomax-8 tanks, while the other had them in-line, with a nose cone to boot. Originally, I got about the same results, and then I re-installed a slightly newer version of NEAR. Engine burnout: Aerodynamic rocket: 34.555 km @ 1729.1 m/s Pancake rocket: 7.617 km @ 192.5 m/s I also got to orbit with ~1.2 km/s less dV than last time, and part of that was a quite subpar launch profile (didn't start my gravity turn nearly soon enough for NEAR).

There are some cases where it's useful: for example, if you forgot to remove the monopropellant from your command pod (and had no RCS), if you need to re-balance your spaceplane a bit, etc.

Thanks. Worked like a charm. Unlike the plane I hurriedly built to test it out. That is lying in a thousand little pieces on the ground.

A variant thereof would be to send up another lab, this one with a ton of parachutes and lander legs, dock it, and either transfer manually or use a mod like Ship Manifest to shuttle over all the science to the second, much-better-prepared-for-landing lab module.

It's also working for me: I'm using ModuleManager 2.5.1, RSS 8.0, various and sundry mods, and just using the old 0.24.2 6.4x config pack. In any case, I'm getting some futziness with biomes: maybe it's because I didn't have blizz78's toolbar, but last time I launched, even when above the ocean, all I was able to get reports for was grassland. Will post more if problem persists. EDIT: It persisted. If I had to guess, it's because for some reason my biomes are RSS stock: when I pop open the Custom Biomes map, it shows Earth instead of Kerbin, and it seems what biome I'm over corresponds to the Earth map. If there's anything I can do to help narrow it down, I'd be willing to help.

So far as I can tell, 0.3.1a is working for me as well, and I did have issues with 0.3.1.

That's... not really a large wing. Large wings as I see them involve attaching wing connectors edge-to-edge.

Relax. I meant it as a joke. Unlike infinigliding, though, I find directed explosive disassembly amusing.

Explosive stage separation is a perfectly valid tactic, why thank you very much. Doesn't take much to get a Munar flyby on starter tech. It's a tad difficult for people just starting the game, yes, but it doesn't take much to get the first decouplers (aforementioned KSC EVA report/surface sample cheese), and once you start staging, you can go anywhere. I built a rocket using no technology from beyond the third level (Stability, General Rocketry, Survivability) which landed on the Mun and returned with 818 m/s dV remaining, even with a deliberately sloppy flight profile. The lander stage is a Mk. 1 command pod, Mk. 16 parachute, 4 goo canisters and 4 LT-1 landing struts on an FL-T400 fuel tank feeding an LV-909 engine. The stage below (separated by a stack decoupler) is 5 FL-T400s feeding an LV-T45 engine; this is surrounded radially by 3 identical liquid rockets and 3 Rockomax BACC SRBs. You fire off the radial stages at launch, decouple the SRBs first, then simultaneously decouple the 3 radial LV-T45s and fire off the central engine. The central stage should get you to the Mun and partway through the landing process, but you'll need to use the upper stage for Munar return. The sole issue I see is that the liquid stages are a bit heavy, so you need to have a slower gravity turn (stay pointed upwards longer, and turn eastwards more slowly as you fight your way through atmosphere).

I'd have to test it out to be sure, but somewhere between your original and where you have it now seems appropriate. While in theory it shouldn't be hard for people to figure this out themselves, I think it might be worthwhile to have instructions on the front page on how to edit the .cfg file to taste. It might be worthwhile to eventually implement a debug menu, a bit like Deadly Reentry's, to do that from in-game. I suspect you have other priorities though, like this "personal life" thing I hear so much about. I do like the decaying rewards, though.

My $0.02 is to have diminishing returns based on how long the strategy's gone on, particularly for the really broken ones like the funds -> science outsourcing strategy. The career mode is seriously trivial at the current rate of funds/science exchange: on my current career (hooray for 0.25 bugs!), I've flown one orbital mission to clear the starter contracts, and a second orbital mission to rescue a Kerbal and gather science data from orbit. Despite having that strategy set to only take 10% of funds, I have 843 science from just those two missions, of which just 204 comes from science experiments.

As far as I can tell, the latest release (by stupidchris) of RealChute works if you delete RealChute/ModuleManager/Stock_Realchute_MM.cfg. This disables all RealChute functionality on the stock chutes and might screw with staging them (I had to right-click deploy manually when I tested it), but the alternative is either not having stock chutes at all (either deleting them or not using them), or not using RealChute at all. EDIT: Just to clarify, it might've also been a goof with using MJ's autostage: I was mostly just interested in seeing whether loading a savegame would crash everything again.

Decided to go for a more realistic, "hardcore" experience by simultaneously loading up NEAR, Deadly Re-Entry, and the 6.4x version of RSS. Who would've thought that it would be so hard playing with hardcore mods?

Started a new career mode game: the old one got too bogged down with landing at every biome on the Mun and Minmus (they were 4-vessel missions: one command vessel with a mobile lab, one scaffold to keep everything docked, one giant fuel can with an LV-N, and a lander). Jebediah got off to a good start: his horribly over-budgeted orbit mission was turned into a Munar flyby with just drops of fuel to spare when he splashed back down on Kerbin (first time in KSP that I've ever manually calculated delta-V; I usually just use MJ for that). I then got a Stayputnik probe with massless parts up to a nearly circular 120 km orbit. I was aware the decoupler would ruin the circularity: what I did not expect was for it to be catapulted at 50 m/s from the launch vehicle into a 180 km apogee. Thankfully I wasn't pointed retrograde. I know the game leaves it on rails so long as it doesn't get below 22 km, but it's still a bit cheating to have a permanent satellite going through atmosphere.

1) Untrue. You can have multiple pods, there are pods with more than one seat, there are external command seats, and there are docking modules which let you assemble multiple vehicles, etc. You can manage it with one of the tabs up near the top of the VAB. That said, for your first Mun mission, KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. A typical first lander is going to be a Mk. 1 command pod on top of a fuel tank, an LV-909 engine, some lander legs, solar panels, batteries, lights, and other science/utility equipment (don't forget the antenna!). 2) Delta-V refers to how much your rocket can change its velocity, and is tied to amount of fuel, fuel efficiency, and vessel dry mass. Ignoring gravity and atmosphere, a rocket with 4,550 m/s of delta-V can change its velocity by 4,550 m/s. That figure is the approximate amount of velocity change you need to get out of atmosphere and get to orbital velocity: you need to go up ~70-80 km (edge of atmosphere is 69,078 meters) and get to ~2200 m/s, all the while fighting atmosphere and gravity. Missions outside Kerbin orbit have other considerations: efficiency depends on how much you can use the Oberth effect, gravitational slingshots, aerobrakes, bi-elliptic transfers, and how much you need to correct your orbital inclination before the transfer burn, and there are probably other tricks I haven't heard of. Learn about these at your own pace. For the ascent phase, you absolutely need a thrust-to-weight (TWR) ratio of 1.0 or greater, and you typically want a TWR slightly > 2 (usually a bit less at launch, because as you consume fuel, your TWR goes up). The reason for this is that if you are going faster than terminal velocity*, you are wasting fuel fighting air resistance, and if you are going slower, you are wasting fuel fighting gravity. You also want to do a gravity turn: at around 10 km altitude, you want to start tipping eastwards, finishing your ascent pointing straight east. The last part of your ascent will be with engines off; you will generally circularize your orbit (get to orbital velocity) once you've left the atmosphere. However, at this point, you should generally be only a few hundred m/s short of orbital velocity anyways. The reason for this is that prograde burns (in the direction of your orbit) are the most efficient way to raise your orbit. In theory, then, one should point one's rocket straight east (in the direction of Kerbin's rotation, which gives you about 150 m/s for free) and start burning, but then you run into these pesky "atmosphere" and "lithosphere" things. Thus, you need to start by going straight up to get out of that thick, thick atmosphere, and gradually start tipping eastwards. *Terminal velocity is how fast you fall: it is the speed at which air resistance exactly matches gravity. Obviously, for rocket ascent, you would be going in the opposite direction. If you are not going in the opposite direction, your space car is not going to space today. #3) You can always just do an orbit or two at 8 km and visually scan for good landing sites. Remember to have a lander with a low center of mass, with the legs as high up as you dare (you do need some clearance so that you don't crunchify your engine). #4) I'd make a maneuver node about a quarter-rotation behind the Mun, set it prograde to get to about Mun orbit, and then play with moving the manuever node and increasing/decreasing thrust to get a good Mun intercept. If it will take your ship 30 seconds to pull off the transfer burn, start 15 seconds before the node: that is the most efficient and least inaccurate way to do it. To set up for this, I would select the Mun as your target, and make a maneuver node at either the ascending or descending node, and set it normal/anti-normal as necessary to match planes with the Mun (should not be difficult, as the Mun orbits exactly around the Equator with no inclination). Also, one note: when returning from the Mun, what you want to do is perform your return burn slightly before your orbit points directly opposite the Mun's orbit, and set it so that your Kerbin periapsis will be at a good aerobraking altitude (37.5 km, in my experience, is reasonably safe for Munar returns). Think of your vessel as being in Kerbin orbit alongside with the Mun: to return to Kerbin, you need to kill a lot of the Mun's orbital velocity. This means exiting Munar orbit going in the opposite direction, and the faster you exit Munar orbit, the less time it's got to try to pull you back to itself. The reason for not burning at exactly that point is that the Mun will curve your orbit, such that when you exit, your trajectory will be going further out in Kerbin orbit. Aerobraking is literally just using the atmosphere to slow your orbital velocity. You want to go deep enough in to reduce orbital velocity without engaging in unplanned lithobraking (complete re-entry, presumably followed by landing... or crashing, if you forgot the parachute and don't have any fuel left). Remember: parachutes don't work on the Mun!