Snark

Moving to Technical Support. Obviously, this isn't supposed to happen, in general. If the problem persists, please consider filing a bug about it-- letting the dev team know about problems is the best way to get them fixed.

Moving to Technical Support.

Moving to Suggestions (since the OP's intent appears to be about the stock game). Though it's worth noting that "new planets" is in the "frequently suggested" list: for example,

Hi, and welcome to the forums! What will happen is that fire comes out of the loud end and then the rocket goes the other way. ...By which I mean, you're fine (if I'm correctly understanding your situation). This is just an orbital ship that will never be landing, correct? In that case... the NERV is an excellent choice for interplanetary mothership types of craft, because of its extremely high fuel efficiency (Isp 800). Yes, it has quite a low TWR. But TWR doesn't matter (much) for orbital-only craft. A TWR of 0.36 is plenty. Where TWR becomes really important is for landers, because the engine has to fight against gravity. Low TWR = lots of fuel wasted due to gravity losses. Too low, and you can't even lift off. But if your ship won't be landing, you're doing just fine. Just a side note (unrelated to your TWR question, but you need to know this if you're using the NERV): One thing to make sure of (this is an easy mistake to make, if you're new to KSP). The NERV engine, unlike all the other rocket engines, runs on liquid fuel only-- it doesn't use oxidizer at all. So if you're putting "normal" fuel tanks on there, you're wasting huge amounts of useless dead weight and you'll get abysmal performance. It's also bad if you use regular fuel tanks and just set the oxidizer to empty, because then you're still lugging too much dead weight in the form of half-empty fuel tanks that are twice as big as they need to be. So be sure that you're using liquid-fuel-only tanks (like the ones that airplanes use) to supply your NERV.

Payload is simply the total mass of your ship while in orbit. It says nothing at all about what that mass consists of, or how "useful" it is. To quote the rules, In your case, the spent Kickback and its assorted paraphernalia are certainly part of your payload, since they're part of your ship while it's in orbit. By the same token, the monopropellant "ballast" also counts as payload. Just now flew your ship again (it's so much fun to watch). I make your payload mass to be 7.91t, rather than the 3.265t that your post quotes. (Sorry I didn't catch this earlier. I don't bother checking the numbers unless someone asks me to, e.g. if they're not sure of their calculations or their rule interpretations. I just take whatever the person provides. We're on the honor system here, which is easy when everyone has to post their actual ships and anyone can check anyone's numbers.) Anyway, given your launchpad mass of 165.728t, that puts your payload fraction as 4.77%. I'll update the leaderboard in the OP for this thread. If you like, you're welcome to go update your post with the corrected numbers. (Perhaps best just to stick an "[EDIT]" comment on the end rather than just silently fixing the numbers, just to prevent confusion for anyone who may be reading this thread in chronological order. But it's up to you.)

Sweet! We have a new leader for both the "Precision" and "Pee Wee" awards. *snif* That's just... beautiful! Right down to the aerodynamic gyro-stabilization. (And I love how you not only deorbit the last booster, but spin-stabilize it while doing so.) But... I don't even... I mean.... Okay, see, now this is why we don't let Wernher anywhere near the VAB after he's been into the eggnog at the office Christmas party! Utterly insane. I love it.

Kerbal mass doesn't get added to crewed parts in the stock game. Launch a Mk1 pod empty, check out the mass on the pad. Then launch it with a kerbal inside, do the same thing. Same mass. I recall having seen a mod somewhere once that actually "fixes" this and makes it add mass for crew members, thus being more realistic. Don't remember the name of the mod. In any case... this really is an ancient thread. Resurrecting it is going to confuse people-- posting here bumps the thread to the top of the list, but someone who goes to start reading sees all this ancient stuff that's now totally moot. Accordingly, locking the thread to prevent further confusion. Generally, if a thread's been dormant that long... it's generally best to just spin up a new thread. If you'd like to talk about the mass of kerbals in general, feel free to spin up a new thread here. If the conversation is about mods, probably the Add-on Discussions forum would be more appropriate. Thank you for your understanding.

Sorry, just now saw this message, managed to miss it earlier. Welcome to the KSP forums! If you can actually get something into a Mun assist, then that's totally fine. Though in that case, for reproducibility, would really help if you've got a record of the exact time that you launch... otherwise other people will have trouble reproducing your results. ...And I can totally see wanting to have timewarp. After all, even on 4X physics warp, the Mun is well over an hour away. The problem is... the timewarp really does affect ship rotation and such, and the choice of when to timewarp can make a significant difference in the ship's orientation, which in turn makes a big change to what happens when you thrust. Of course, that only matters if you're going to be firing any engines after timewarping. If you're not, then timewarping doesn't affect your ship's trajectory. So, how about this: yes, timewarp is okay.... but only if you fire no engines after timewarping. For example, if you finish firing all your engines to send yourself on a Mun-intercept trajectory, and then you're done, and the Mun flyby puts you into an orbit of Kerbin... then that is okay. Does that seem reasonable? Excellent, thanks! I need to go offline myself here shortly, but will be adding your entry to the OP lists as soon as I have a chance (likely tomorrow).

Good grief, just now had a chance to actually look at your ship. 10/10 for style, dude. You did it in pure stock, and SSTO! No timers at all. You, sir, are a steely-eyed missile man. Hats off. I also really like what you did by arranging it so the launched craft actually has no probe core on it at all (by sticking the core to the launch clamps). That's a real touch of class, there. One interesting thing I discovered when flying your ship, though: when launching, it's important to wait a few seconds before activating the launch-from pad. When I flew it the first time, I was so eager I hit the space bar at the earliest possible instant. Result: it didn't actually make orbit. Climbed a hair too steeply, ended up with its Ap out at like 400 km and its Pe underground. Moral of the story: for this sort of hands-off launch, a tiny difference in launch angle at the start can make a huge difference down the line. When a ship first goes to the pad, it wobbles a bit as the physics ease in, and that effect is magnified for this particular ship since you've got the launch clamps way down at one end. So, advice for future adventurers: make sure you wait a few seconds after going to the pad before taking off, so that the oscillations have a chance to die down. (I've added a "gotchas" section to the OP and called this out.)

Nope, has to be an actual orbit. Mainly because the precision of getting to elliptical orbit (especially one that's close to circular) is harder than an escape trajectory (or at least, so it seems to me).

Woot! First person to take up the gauntlet! Lemme go add that to the OP. Excellent, thanks for running that down! I'll add that to the OP.

Interesting, it's pretty consistent for me. I've run it a few times and it was nearly same results each time, within a few percent anyway. Even running the whole thing in "realtime" gave very nearly the same result as doing quite a bit of 4x physics warp. Wonder what's different in your case? When I get to a KSP computer and have a little time, I'll post a screenshot sequence showing the trajectory that I observe. Will make it easier to see at what point your experience diverges from mine.

Correct, it doesn't specify a value, which means it gets the default value that all the antennas get that don't override the default. For comparison, take a look at the part config for the stock RA-100. That doesn't specify a value for combinability exponent, either. So yes, it combines, and in the same mathematical fashion as the RA-100 and other "default combinability exponent" antennas. Though with 1000G range all by its lonesome, if you find yourself needing to combine these big fellas, you must have one heck of an expanded solar system...

In principle, I don't have a problem with the idea of a mod that can do the two things that the Smart Parts parts can do (namely, "stage when empty" and "stage after countdown")-- as long as that's the only thing it does, and it doesn't apply any other sort of control input (no torque output; no use of sensor readings for timing; etc. However... one of the things I'd like to be the output of this challenge is, each person links to their .craft file, and anybody who's participating can try out anybody else's .craft, without having to install any mod at all other than the one (Smart Parts) that's already listed. Also, the Smart Parts are really limited, they can only do those two things... I really don't feel like having to get into a lengthy technical discussion with someone about whether this or that kOS function is allowable. Having the physical limit built in to the hardware itself just seems to keep things straightforward. So I'd really prefer just sticking to this one. FWIW, they're really easy to use. The one part will cause the next stage to fire when the SRB it's attached to burns out. The other one, the timer, is a stageable object itself. When its stage action fires, it counts down for a set interval and then activates the next stage. They're pretty intuitive; I found that just sitting down for a few minutes and fiddling with them was enough to get a general feel for how they work.

No, doesn't have to be an SSTO. It can have as many stages as you like. Correct, only SRBs. See Rule #2. This one's an absolute no. Absolutely no player control over the ship under any circumstances, other than the instant of launch. That's the whole point of the challenge. See Rule #3. See Rule #5. There are a couple of specific parts from the Smart Parts Continued mod, which are allowed. One fires a stage after a timer, the other fires a stage when an SRB burns out. Between the two of these, you can automate the launch just fine. It's just that these are all you're allowed to automate with.

Your mission: Launch a ship to Kerbin orbit, completely unguided (i.e. the only interaction you have is to hit the spacebar once to launch off the pad), using nothing but SRBs. Note: Challenge allows use of timers from Smart Parts Continued (see rules below). It's doable in pure stock without the timers, but there's no separate category for pure-stock entries. Background: This challenge is inspired by Ōsumi-5, the first successful Japanese satellite, launched in 1970. It was put into orbit aboard the Lambda 4S launch vehicle: a four-stage rocket entirely powered by solid fuel, that had no guidance or control systems at all. As described here, Lots of additional discussion (with plenty of numbers) here. This immediately struck me as one of the most Kerbal things I ever heard, so naturally this challenge was the first thing to spring to mind. The rules: You must put a craft into orbit around Kerbin. It must be powered solely by solid fuel. No engines that are supplied by liquid fuel or any other propellant. So, basically, just SRBs, plus Sepratrons and/or LES if you like. It must have no control input whatsoever, other than the initial stage action to launch it off the pad. In other words: you launch it, then completely hands-off. You just sit there and watch it complete its mission. No interacting with the ship in any way. This includes not just control input like WASD, but also adjusting tweakables, etc. No SAS turned on. No active reaction wheels at all (not that this matters, with SAS turned off and no player input...) No aerodynamic control surfaces (fixed surfaces only). (again, not that this matters, with SAS turned off and no player input...) With the exception of two specific mod parts (see below), it must be pure stock only. No modded parts at all, other than specified below. No mods that affect game physics at all. No mods that affect ship control at all (such as MechJeb, or the flight computer in RemoteTech). No modification (e.g. via ModuleManager) any of the characteristics of stock parts. You can use the stock game's built-in editor tweakables, that's it. Mods that have no physical effect on the ship at all are fine (e.g. visual F/X like PlanetShine or Scatterer, or info displays) There are two specific mod parts that you ARE allowed to use. These are from Smart Parts Continued. The two specific parts are: The AGT-Timer (full name: AGT-Timer Timed Action Group Trigger). This is a timer which, when activated by a staging action, will wait a set time limit before activating the next stage. The Drainex-1 (full name: Drainex 1 - Fuel Sensor and Action Group Trigger). When you stick this to an SRB, it will activate the next stage when the SRB burns out. To be clear, none of the other SmartParts parts are allowed. Just the above two. No time warp allowed. This one's a bit subtle... it's to avoid a sneaky back-door way for the player to get some control of the ship. Turning on time warp will instantly stop all ship rotation, which is an unfair magical "stabilization" of the ship. So, don't. Physics warp is allowed as a timesaver, if you like, as long as you're not exploiting it to cause some sort of kraken effect. Some gotchas and warnings: When launching your ship: after it goes to the pad, wait a few seconds before taking off, so that the initial physics oscillations have a chance to die down. Very tiny perturbations to the initial angle of the ship can have a big impact on its eventual orbit! Don't run RealPlume. Turns out it's not just a visual F/X mod; it affects engine performance. (Thanks to @tg626 for tracking this down.) Submission guidelines: Just post in this thread, with the following items included. Please share your .craft file somewhere public (e.g. dropbox, Google Drive, whatever) so people can download and try it out. (The fun part here is that the .craft file is all that's needed, since no piloting is involved. Anyone can just hit spacebar on the launch pad and see how it flies!) Include either a screenshot or a brief description of your craft on the launchpad. Provide the following information (which, of course, can be checked by anyone who downloads your .craft file): Mass on launchpad Mass after achieving orbit Periapsis altitude Apoapsis altitude Orbital eccentricity. This is calculated as: (Ap - Pe) / (Ap + Pe + 2RKerbin), where RKerbin is Kerbin's planetary radius of 600 km (or 600,000 m... be sure that all three numbers are in the same units!) Payload fraction. This is defined as orbital mass divided by launchpad mass. A working example Here's an example that I put together as proof of concept, just to get the ball rolling. It's not trying to be "the best" at anything, it's just the first thing I built that actually gets to orbit by the rules above. The winners: A few categories here. I'll update as people post results. The "Just Do It" Award: Just get to orbit, by the above rules. Any orbit is fine. There's no "rank" or "top" here, it's just a complete list of people who have done the challenge and posted their results, in the order received. I'll include myself at the top of the list, due to my example above. @Snark @ManEatingApe (entry) @HydraZineSoda (entry) @tg626 (entry) @Starman4308 (entry) The "Precision" Award: Get into the most circular orbit, defined as having the lowest eccentricity. Top 10: 0.0208, @HydraZineSoda (entry) 0.0699, @tg626 (entry) 0.101, @ManEatingApe (entry) 0.213, @Starman4308 (entry) The "Efficiency" Award: Get into orbit with the highest payload fraction. Top 10: 20.5%, @ManEatingApe (entry) 6.52%, @HydraZineSoda (entry) 5.47%, @Starman4308 (entry) 0.36%, @tg626 (entry) The "Pee Wee" Award: Get into orbit with the smallest possible launchpad mass. Top 10: 11.65t, @HydraZineSoda (entry) 22.265t, @tg626 (entry) 30.6t, @ManEatingApe (entry) 165.728t, @Starman4308 (entry) The "Totally Kerbal" Award: This is a completely subjective category, based on my personal opinion. It's for listing people who go above and beyond the call of duty by achieving insanely ingenious things using only the above rules. Landed on the Mun? Orbited Kerbin and then landed on the runway? Got to orbit without using any of the allowed SmartParts mentioned above? Something else that makes people go, "holy heck, how did they do that?" Here's your chance to show off! Items presented here in chronological order of submission. Not gonna try to "rank" these. @ManEatingApe (entry), for submitting the first completely stock entry. No timers at all, it's pure stock! (I also like how his design manages to put no probe core at all on the launched ship.) @tg626 (entry), for a beautiful replica of the actual IRL Ōsumi satellite, including aerodynamic spin stabilization. (With style points for deorbiting the last booster stage.) @Starman4308 (entry), for an ingenious Rube Goldberg contraption. (Multi-stage... in pure stock!)

Welcome to the forums! KSP 1.2 added a new feature, "Aim Camera Here" (button on the part menu)-- just click on the part you want to look at (or at least, a part close to there) and focus the camera.

Hello, and welcome to the forums! If you're finding it difficult, you might try an unmanned probe to Duna first, just for landing practice. If you want to do a land-and-return vehicle, one handy way to practice is to do something like this: save your game launch just the "lander / ascent" part of your duna ship to the launchpad use the "Set Orbit" function on the debug cheat menu to put it directly into orbit of Duna now practice landing it and taking off again. tweak ship as needed, repeat steps 2-4 once you're happy with it, load the save you made in step #1 (to undo all the cheating) and then work from there General tip for landing on Duna: use a combination of parachutes and engine. The air is so thin that if you try to land on parachutes alone, you end up spamming so many parachutes that the mass just kills you; and if you try to use engines-only, that's a whole lot of dV wasted. You definitely want to have some drogue chutes on your ship, again because of Duna's thin atmosphere-- they can deploy at lower pressures and open at higher speeds. An example of an easy, cheap, and lightweight way to land on Duna is: Put a couple of the small radial drogue chutes, plus an appropriate number (not too many) of regular chutes. Set the drogues to open fairly high up (say, 4000 meters instead of the default 2500), ditto the regular chutes (say, 2000 meters instead of the regular 1000). Go ahead and trigger all the chutes long before you get down to the appropriate altitude. They'll deploy when they can. The drogues slow you down some, the regular chutes slow you down further. Now you're dropping those last couple of hundred meters to touchdown, but pretty fast (like, 20-30 meters per second). Use a brief burst of rocket thrust right before touchdown to slow to a safe landing speed.

Sorry for the disruption, everyone. I totally dropped the (nav)ball. 1.5.2 is just a broken update, it's simply wrong, and I didn't test enough to catch it. Mea culpa, totally my fault, it's been a very hectic week (not that that's any excuse) and I didn't do sufficient testing before releasing it. I've released v1.5.3 now, which puts it back the way it was in 1.5.1. It's fixed. Really sorry for the screwup. Now I just need to go hide in a cave.

I've always kinda liked how although Eve is pretty much the final frontier for manned exploration, it practically in the front of the line for unmanned one-way missions. Very easy and simple to land a one-way probe on, even with fairly low tech. Doesn't take too much dV to get there. Travel time is relatively short, in interplanetary terms. Has scads of science, especially now in 1.2 that they've added a whole bunch of biomes and jacked up the percentage of science you can return via transmission.

My list: Using the science lab Letting a kerbal die, ever Sending a kerbal on a one-way mission Autostruts Part clipping (other than occasional trivial/cosmetic) Allowing any probe control at all when no CommNet connection Spaceplanes Can probably come up with a few more, but those are probably the big ones for me.

Locking per author's request. Thank you for all the hard work, @lo-fi, and best wishes for your next adventures. And a friendly word of advice for any of the folks who are eagerly awaiting the next incarnation of this (or any other) mod: please don't post requests for updates, especially when it's already been asked-- it doesn't help matters to jostle mod authors' elbows and breathe down their necks. It's also against forum guidelines (rule 2.3.f, in particular). If there's a mod you love and just can't wait... well, it'll be ready when it's ready. Just follow the mod's thread, and the author will post an update when they have the time and inclination to do so. Thanks!

It actually, genuinely removes it from the network, and I have it from a reliable source that yes, that's by design.

Well, sure, never said it wasn't. Somewhat related topic, for folks (like me) who are amused by this sort of thing:

Well, the aero rules have changed slightly since then (blunt things have gotten a bit more draggy, pointy things a bit less draggy), but overall it still holds, the ship works just fine. Did you try flying this exact ship? What's your speed, altitude, and angle when each stage burns out? Sure they are. By "2-ton LFO tank", I mean the FL-T400, which does in fact hold exactly two tons of LFO. By "4-ton LFO tank", I mean the FL-T800, which does in fact hold exactly four tons of LFO. (The full tanks themselves weigh slightly more than that, of course-- 2.25 tons and 4.5 tons, respectively-- but that's because there's some dead weight there; the tanks have some "dry weight" even when completely empty.) Sorry for the confusion; I say "2-ton LFO tanks" because, first, "how much fuel does it hold" is generally a much more important number than "what's the total mass of the full tank"; and, second, if I called it by its proper name "FL-T400", most folks would have no idea what I mean and would have to go look it up.