heng

Uhhh, do a third one with Levelord's RAPIERSPIKE invention! Seems like that should increase efficiency a bit even more... Nice ship!

Could you shield the strut aerodynamically? i.e. place some more or less aerodynamically formed part right above the starting node? Assuming it is the drag, of course. If it is the weight, than that's a bug. But we should be able to counter the drag... If I test this right now, I will be dragged out of the office by my earlobes... so if someone else...? ;-)

in 5 years, god emperor of earth - Scott M. - will have humanity in his tight grasp. supported by thousands of self-launched orbital laser satellites his regime will have the kerbal theme as national anthem. orbital physics will be started teaching before toilette training and the atmospheric remodelling to match KSP's physics is still underway. but the mandatory carrying of 5 litres of jetpack fuel everytime you leave your home will incite discontent. the Mechjeb resistance will have formed an alliance with Hooligan Labs' subsea base dwellers, and frequent uprisings of non-aeqatorial cities - now outlawed - will dominate the news. ... i need to start reading more positive attitude books...

Grats for saving her! Could you in theory use Ike to do the inclination reversal for even less? i.e. coming in from Duna orbit to encounter Ike just barely (AP just touching into Ike's SOI), would give you a free polar direction for Ike. Doing a tiny change to flip the inclination shouldn't cost much, and then leaving Ike you would basically have reverted your orbit? maybe not a full 180° but at least 120°? Just speculating here... any people who know if that works? can't try right now...

Left SAS on during reentry... ditched the stage with the batteries/solar panels... by the time i was slow enough to deploy the chutes i was out of power... that's when i found out kerbals can survive splashdowns of >40m/s. all the science lost, though. so a fail in my book. honorable mention: touchdown on a slope... hatch faced down... EVA resulted in an instant splat and a dead kerbal poor Duddin.

just watched the vid, i think he understood KSP's primary rule perfectly: - Have Fun! i'm under the impression he had some... nothing wrong with that. "Scott Manley! You lied to me..." Hahaha, favourite quote!

I play stock (+KER, for the valuable information; +KAC, for juggling several missions with my faulty short term memory) because i barely manage to get to duna in career before a new version pops up and i have incompatible save games... all the new parts and features would overly complicate things for me. it's fun as it is, more fun is good, but i haven't even completely used up all the stock fun yet. that said, i urge you to try one additional mod, which i found absolutely essential for my playing experience: Chatterer! now new with female voices! :-D

ask those guys: MarsPolar Project they are going after the water ice on duna's... errr: mars' poles, so they obviously have some wet dreams :-D

you could just open a sandbox and timewarp there... AFAIK the way KSP is set up means, the dates are interchangable. correct me if i'm wrong

totally realistic, feasible, and thus never going to happen due to bureaucratic incompetence.

Jem? Not asian, though...

you can get visuals of the forces acting on your craft during ascent if you hit F12. if you see a lot of red vectors pointing away from your rocket, you might want to adjust stuff...

congrats! you do know, that you have space on top of your fuel tanks for science junior and goo canisters? if you attach the tanks not directly to the center tank, but with a radial decoupler, you can just leave the empty fuel tanks, landing legs, emptied(!) science thingy's, and any lights you might bring on the surface... return only the center.

Yes. They will return with a full star (Kerbin Orbit = 2) If you land anyway, plant a flag for one additional XP.

Pft. just wait until we find (or are found by) hostile aliens and the two budgets get combined :-D "Hostile Aliens"... that might be us. I seriously hope they will sterilize the lander _very_ thoroughly!

Shift sprinting while on surface EVAs only works, if you haven't activated the jetpack. If you want to refuel a craft w/o docking port (you should have included one!), the claw can transfer fuel. You can adjust the color of stock lights by right-clicking during assembly. This can help distinguish left/right or similar, and makes prettier ships. While descending under multiple parachutes rotate your craft. The chutes will cover slightly more area -> more drag -> slower descent. Pretty minimal effect, though. Might be a life saver in rare occurences. (Or bring more chutes!)

ten... 10. i mean... TEN?!? they leave room for a 10% safety margin? I blush in shame... I either run out of fuel half way or have enough left over to do the whole mission again :-( ©

You will need only a few drop of fuel to reach a polar Mun orbit if you set up the maneuver while leaving Kerbin. I.e. setup the encounter with a high inclination angle. That way you will arrive with a heavily inclined course already.

second that.

awesome find! thanks.

ah, yes, i see... forgot to take that into account :-( woah... nice. 50k?!? that's overengineered :-P but see, that is exactly my problem you described... the usual gravity turn just kills me. or rather, my kerbals and the ship. i do not use mechjeb (please no pro-con discussion in here) and i just can't manage to keep it stable... so no alternate value to compare. guess i'll have to live with spending more dV than necessary... thanks anyway for all your explanations! that's the difference Streetwind mentioned: dV vs. fuel the same amount of fuel will result in different amounts of effective dV, depending on how when where you burn...

Trying to get to Minmus with a top-heavy launcher, not very aerodynamic (only have 1.5m fairings)... So, the general consensus seems to be a pretty flat profile, turning more or less immediately after launch - not easy, see above. Can anyone who knows some numbers tell me, what the effect would be of the following? delta-v wise, i mean... Do no gravity turn _at_all_ inside the atmosphere. - just burn straight up(*), until you AP is at roughly 150-200 km or higher? - resulting AP should still be way above 100km after leaving the atmosphere - do _not_ circularize, just raise you PE to 70km - at PE start your escape burn towards Minmus Granted, you would have to time the launch just right to encounter Minmus... pro: : minimum of atmospheric influence : no stability problems due to drag : high AP makes for an efficient burn to raise PE to >70km : low PE makes for an efficient burn to Minmus con: : did not find any reference to it, so i assume it can't be the optimal ascend... -- (*) yes, i know, burn downwards. you know what i mean :-P

No, you didn't do anything 'wrong'. It just comes out that way. If you keep playing a while and do this more often, you will soon learn to eyeball your initial orbit so that the waiting time gets reduced (if possible). Your orbit is 80km, to ~90km of your target. that is not much... you could in theory go up to - say for example - 150km and let the target catch up with you. this might be faster... but will cost more d/v. For now i recommend playing this through. Plant a flag at the KSC, switch to it. Then you can timewarp as fast as you like without having to go to the astronaut complex at all (and thus reducing loading times).

you probably might want to watch Vsauce's video on numbers and counting, if you are into that kind of questions:

ok, so you are faster than your target. your ship goes around Kerbin in a circle... one round is one orbital revolution. two rounds are two orbital revolutions, the second pass set a regular maneuver node. right (left? left, then right? dunno right now) click on it. you should get a display with three buttons on the node. upper right: close, lower left: minus one revolution (initially greyed out), lower right: plus one revolution. watch the time next to your navball telling you when the node will be reached. this should change accordingly... i.e. initial time to node: 1min. click "plus" and the time changes to 1min + 1h (if you need 1h to do a full orbit) if you set a node and do absolutely nothing, you will just pass it, and then pass by it again. and again, as you keep going round in circles (or ellipses). with the buttons described above, you can tell KSP to calculate everything as if you execute your burn at the next pass. or as many passes in the future as you like. that's absolutely fine. your orbit being circular just makes it easier for the basic method (above post) to do. i.e. you can just set a maneuver anywhere and do not have to worry about efficiency and Oberth and stuff... by no means requirement, just easier. setting up your encounter at PE/AP only makes it easier to match velocities later on. recommended, but not required. Starwhip's tutorial is brilliant. if you can spare a couple of minutes, go read it! PS: "same plane" - "plane" as in geometrical plane spanned by three points, not the avionic plane with wings... your orbit lies in a plane. ideal launches will end up in the equatorial plane. seldomly do so for me your target's orbit is another plane, you should aim to be in the same. if not, your orbit will intersect the target's plane in two points. going up, and going down again. easily seen if you tilt your camera so that your orbit is a straight line. try it. if your target's orbit is the same straight line, you are coplanar. if not, you should see the other orbit being tilted, relative to yours. can you see it? it is inclined. there are to markers once you select a target with an orbit. the ascending node and the descending node. the values given are in angular degrees. if you burn up or down there (purple navball markers) you can change your inclination to match. and only at these points you can do so! PPS: sorry for laggy response time, at the office right now, boss comes around every now and then :-)