TheXRuler

Ah well if you use the OP fusion engines this might actually be possible, albeit very diffucult. As others have stated, building something that flies on kerbin AND on duna is hard enough. Building something that flies to duna, lands and takes of horizontally will be incredibly difficult as the larger wing needed on duna will increase your drag on kerbin to a level where it will be near impossible to reach orbit with enough fuel to even get to duna. However if you insist (and if the fusion engines are efficient enough) I would say land and take of from duna vertically. It should be possible to build something that has a TWR of greater than one on Duna due to the reduced mass (burnt fuel) and the lower gravity. You said VTOL, have you ever tried building a VTOL aircraft? it is incredibly hard (and really inefficient) to balance a plane for VTOL. Also, Dunas atmosphere is so thing that you do not even need a plane since there is no pressure and no resistance to speak of. The problem will be, since Duna has such a small (and thin) atmosphere that the added drag and weight from the wings will actually barely (if at all) outweigh the gain, and the added mass will substantially impact your dV. If you really want a spaceplane to somewhere I'd recommend Laythe. It even has oxygen so you can use turbojets/rapiers and the atmosphere is much more like kerbins.

If this is not for a challenge then I would reccommend trying something else. If it is, well, definetly use a NERV for all your inspace burns. And learn to use gravity assists if you do not already know how. It should definetly be possible, I have seen people land on duna with the kerbal-X stock rocketso I now firmly believe that anything is possible. If it doesen't absolutely have to be a SSTO you might try adding drop tanks, leaving behind a few tons of empty tank can do wonders for you dV. - - - Updated - - - Also, never, ever ever ever EVER EVER EVER use SRB's on a spaceplane (except for leaving the runway) unless you are trying to build something really ridiculous. spaceplanes are really hard anyway, and ones that can go to duna need a lot of knowledge and experience, or a hella lotta math

I seem to remeber someone having a similar issue, ended up being something screwy with KER or mechjeb (can't remember which one they were using). Did you add up how much your manouvre nodes cost you? I assume it's not some newbie mistake since you have already been to laythe etc.. I have found that KER is very weird when the root part is not in the last stage so maybe that'll help.

the place where I use ants is when I need cheap small satellites. I like to do things like, gather 6 "put satellite in orbit x" contracts then launch them all at the same time on a lifter rocket and send them on their way. the tiny weight of this tiny engine means you need less fuel, and when the entire craft weighs .7 tons it feels stupid to put a .5 ton engine (LV909-Terrier) on the back. Also, like I said, it's cheap.

ahhh ok xD all I saw was that gigantic launch stage and I was like, ummmm there is nothing mini about this Oo. Have you had this issue on other craft? If so it might very well be a proper bug (or some unknown feature). If not It might just be a .craft related weirdness. I have had very crazy things happen in KSP that were only ship specific.

@reguia I see what you mean, however if the orbital period is your problem start your mission well in advance like three months or so, I do this anyway because it provides me wiht ample time to test the vessel, send up anything I might have forgotten, refuel, test some more, and most importantly plan my burn(s). In fact what I often do is launch the vessel when I have a cool idea for a mission (which might be a year and a half before the transfer window) then add and subtract things as I see fit, (yes my plans often change after mission launch xD)and most importantly plan things properly, that coulpled with laies ingenious idea of using a probe for manouvre planning and an idea I just had should make it quite easy really. The idea I just had: Refuel at minmus, set up a monouvre with the probe, figure out how long it'll take to that manouvreand set your orbital period accordingly, then when on the new orbit lower your PE at the correct time and enjoy the oberth goodness

If I may make some recommendations: loose the 1.25 m stage and one set of liquid boosters, add at least one more tank to the centeral stage and use a small 2.5m second stage. While this may seem ridicolously overpowered it will probably be more efficient, especially if you crossfeed fuel from the outer to the innner tanks. If you don't want the additional weight of a larger 2.5 m engine such as the poodle you could try emptying some of the fuel before launch and using a smaller engine covered by an interstage fairing, now that I think of it, why not use interstage fairings to make the rocket smoother without dumping the 1.25m cor for a 2.5m core Also, fins at the bottom will help you fly straight, and winglets will actually provide you with control authority. In my experience any rocket that get's thinner in the middle will flip if not built and piloted veeeery carefully.

Wellllll that's weird Oo do you still have your savefiles etc when launching directly from the KSP_win directory? If not maybe you are looking at a clean install? I know this sounds dumb but it's hapened a few time to me with all the different versions with and without mods and with different sets of mods

Why on earth did you call that mostrosity miniprobe Oo On another note, I have no idea why this would be happening, if it's a bug I haven't heard of it so far. If nobody comes up with a fix for this maybe post it in the stock/modded support forums

Never, basically rocket fuel in stock KSP is for free. For the price of a single Mainsail engine (13000) you can buy 16250 units of liquid fuel, now, while this disregards the cost of oxidizer my point is you can buy ~three orange jumbo tanks worth of fuel for the price of a single mainsail. If you can build a plane that uses much more than that to get to orbit you have my respect - - - Updated - - - Did some quick math and figured 16k LFO mix to orbit isn't actaully that much but still, if you add the cost of tanks, fins decouplers and engines the amount of LFO mix you can buy for one stage, never mind a 3 stage rocket with external boosters, becomes ridiculous.

You can use the rotation and offset tools in the editor (the 4 icons at the top left but right of the part list) to put almost any part in almost any position you want (though there are some really weird bugs sometimes ^^)

Ah well that will (or should anyway) produce a massive amount of drag. The idea is very interesting, although I doubt it would work very well with more realistic supersonic aerodynamics, however, most stock designs don't work well with that so forget that. I would think that oyu might actually get more stability if you put the larger fin directly on the tank, and a similarily shaped wing segment (or another fin) infront and then added the little fins to the top of that to create double tail, similar to the F-22

cool idea, however as you said drag is an issue, I would reccommend replacing the girder with a similar sized wing segment. Shouldn't lose you any stability and is still more aerodynamic - - - Updated - - - From your screenshot it is not quite clear but I assume the air flows over it roughly from where the camera is?

SRB's are cheap, semi reliable "trash cans full of boom". If you want to go cheap use many SRBs, if you want to go light use liquid fuel. And Pure SRB first stages with or multiple stage SRB lifters are fine, just make sure they fire at the same time and then arrange staging by adjusting burn time or using different SRB sizes. E.g. one KD-25k set to 80% thrust and 6 BACC will boost you up very nicely very cheaply.

If you are using steam, just delete physics.cfg and let it check the game cache, if not, redownload KSP, copy then entire downloaded data into your current KSP directory and choose don't copy when asked to replace things. That way it should only paste the physics.cfg

I have seen a Spaceplane capable of putting several hundred tons in orbit, will post a link when I find it. My best plane so far can manage ~68 tons to orbit.

@Requia I don't quite get what you are saying, the time between windows to where and why would it be harder to figure it out? As long as you place the manouvre node at the right angle it should be just as hard or easy to find the right angle. Like a week off is fine as long as you adjust the ejection burn to interplanetary space accordingly. Also, if you first place one node to lower your PE to ~80km (should cost no more than ~200 m/s) and then do your ejection burn at the lowest point you will get a massive boost from the oberth effect because you have a really damn high AP and the lowest possible PE meaning you should be going some 3000m/s at PE. That would indeed be a little harder to figure out but then again you just need to set up you retrograde burn for the low PE, then the ejection burn at PE and then just drag the first node around to get the timing right... trial and error and a bit fiddly yes, but not that hard as long as you aren't trying to do the actual math.

I don't think so. From the last few posts I would think that at least some people would like to revive it. Just to put an idea out there, how about a new savegame (keeping the old one for old times sake of course ) in ultra hard carreer mode (I say ultra hard because with funding beeing as it is one might as well play science mode when on easy/regular), that way there would be more of an objective, and saving money, eg. by using mining stations and LKO/midway refueling would actually make sense maybe a bit of a challenge would encourage players to be more creative. Also, it would enable some kinds of leaderboards as in max science per mission, max distance for low cost/part count etc.

Actually a grad tour craft doesen't have to be huge, you just have to be really efficient. However I agree with Echo there. My problem is that I am currently working on putting ~1500 tons into low pol orbit in many many seperate missions and even designing the mission for that is taking all my time atm. Also one reason I am not as enthusiastic with this as I probably should be is that it's stock (don't get me wrong I get why it has to be this way) and I am a mod fanatic. I feel like I am just missing so many parts when playing without all of the mods I use like KW Rocketry, B9 and B9 P-Wings, KSPI-E, Kethane, MKS and OKS etc. etc. etc. I guess my imagination is not good enough but I often feel like it is a little pointless to build stations and bases in stock since there is no life support and no way to make anything self sustaining. I like going big, like ridiculously oversized 1200 ton Stations and in stock that just seems pointless

I was patient enough. However as the forum rules clearly state "bump" comments are not allowed, and since this forum is used a lot my thread dissapeared onto the second page before i even had one answer. So I posted something to keep the thread up.

Those are two completely different things That is what I was referring to. I took part in quite a lengthy discussion on the topic of oberth effect and the most efficient way to leave kerbin and the consensus was, if you are not refuelling try avoid circularizing and instead go straight for an ejection. That is the most dV efficient way. However the way to leave with absolute maximum dV left would be to have a fuel depot right on the edge of kerbins SOI. Then fly up, refuel and do maybe a 15m/s burn to eject yourself into solar SOI. That way you have mor dV in solar orbit. Ejection angles aren't hard if the orbital period is longer. you just have to plan things a little more carefully since the most important factor for an efficient transfer is not hte time of departure but the angle. At least that's what I remember somebody smarter than me saying.

Have they really made carrer so easy that launching some additional 40 tons has no real funds impact? I mean like half the mission cost is the booster, and if you can save 50% payload mass then that should make it more than worthwile.

I think minmus is waaaaay better. Think of it this way, orbital velocity around the mun at low alt is ~570 m/s if I remember correctly and around minmus it's only ~160 m/s or so. That means more fuel into orbit. Also lower gravity means less gravity losses, and you don't need as much engine mass on minmus due to the low gravity. Insertion into munar orbit can be rather expensive in terms of dV due to the high orbital velocity. Also, when departing from minmus you don't need much dV to leave kerbins SOI as you are already close to the edge. However inclination is a problem as you say. To circumvent that I would reccommend a reasonably large (huge if you dare landing it) fuel lifter and a LV-N powered fuel tug in low minmus orbit. Refill the tug and leave minmus, refuel a massive fuel depot placed at the same orbital altitude as minmus with out the inclination. That way you can have a lot of fuel in high kerbin orbit without the added inclination. I had a discussion about something similar a while back on these forums and while departing from LKO is cheaper in terms of dV (due to the oberth effect) you will actually have more fuel once you have reached escape velocity if you refuel very high up in kerbins SOI since it costs almost nothing to reach escape velocity from there

Ahhh I have been thinking about making a lifter series for some time now... However my problem has always been that I am a mod fanatic basically because they make more awesomer smoother looking rockets easier to build. What I would recommend is taking the munshine lifters as inspiration and get a tiny, part free, plugin mod called KER. Basically what that does is provide you with all the data you could ever need (such as TWR of every stage, dV and ISP and mass and cost etc etc of every stage in your craft) but would normally have to calculate by hand, which is slow and rather tedious work. Further complicated by the facte that you would have to recalculate everything everytime you add a part. KER doesen't make building any easier, it just removes a lot of the guesswork. After you have built a few lifters for different payloads it really becomes quite easy. If however you definetly want to use a pre built set I reccommend checking out the Spacecraft Exchange or asking around in the Rocket Builders sub-forum. Just ask around in the bigger (or the smaller ) companies to see if someone is working on something or is interested. Greeting TXR

Really? Nobody has any ideas? :c