OhioBob

Cool! That 5th planet looks like a super-Earth. I can certainly give that baby a really thick atmosphere. (edit) If those are all drawn to scale, I can certainly envision many of them having substantial atmospheres.

I didn't use any for about the first six months because I wanted to learn how everything worked in stock. I then gradually started adding a few, keeping the ones I likes and deleting the ones I didn't. I probably now have about 12 to 15 installed. Current mod list (subject to change without notification):

I don't know if that would be possible to construct. To give it a surface to land on, it would have to created as a solid planet. We could then give it a really thick atmosphere, but atmospheres are transparent. Therefore it would just end up looking like a rocky planet, not a gas giant. Gas giants and solid planets are really two distinct classes, I don't think there is anyway to make some sort of hybrid that would look right.

I'm going to try to use a scientific rationale for everything I do to make things as realistic as possible (except of course that everything is scaled to stock sized proportions and densities). Whether or not a planet can retain an appreciable atmosphere is a function of its temperature and escape velocity. As a gas heats up its molecules move faster, and if they exceed escape velocity the atmosphere will leak away leaving behind an airless world. I plan to test each body to see if it's even feasible that it could have an atmosphere. If so I'll give it one, but it's far to early to know any specifics. All temperatures will be based on calculations taking into account the amount of solar radiation a planet receives and its albedo. If it's too hot to land on, it won't to because on any arbitrary decision on my part. Three sounds good to me.

I haven't used it myself, but I think it's this one...

Not necessarily. In KSP, each body is given a radius and a surface gravity. Kerbin's radius is 600 km and its surface gravity is 1 g. We can give Gael those same values or assign different values. And even if Gael is given the same radius, there is no requirement that it's surface gravity must be 1 g. For instance, we could say that Gael is a lower density world with a surface gravity of 0.9 g. However, there is a limited range of surface gravities for which we can make a rational argument. Go too high or too low and it would suggest a very strange planetary structure beyond our current experience.

That's right. All the planets in stock KSP are about 1/10th the diameter and 1/100th the mass of their real life counterparts. This keeps their surface gravities the same as if they were life sized worlds, but it gives them absurdly high densities (10x real life).

I'll be doing the atmospheres for these planets. I haven't received @Galileo's initial cfg files yet, but if he keeps Gael about the same size as Kerbin, then I'll certainly give it the same or a very similar atmosphere. I would also recommend keeping Gael's surface gravity equal to one Earth gravity, but we'll see. Kerbals use the same units of measure that we do, and internally those units of measure are based on 1 g = 9.81 m/s2, so it would be weird if that wasn't the standard gravity of their home world.

Well, there was certainly an incentive to maintain vertical ascent longer back then to get up and out of the lower atmosphere as quickly as possible. This was, of course, because of the absurd drag model that was in place back in the pre-1.0 days. Though you are correct that large sudden turns are never good, even back then. Back in those days I still performed a gradual turn similar to what I do now, I just started it much latter in the ascent. If I remember correctly, I think I started turning around 5 km.

Absolutely. The work you've done so far is first rate, I'd be happy to help out. Those planets look beautiful. There is just some basic information that I need to work up some realistic temperature and pressure curves. We can either discuss it here in this thread or we can private message. Let me know what you want to do. BTW, I like the idea of making this an entirely new and alternative solar system. Of course that decision is yours.

As @Streetwind explained, it's hard to know what mods to recommend without knowing what you want out of your game playing experience. The mods that I find most indispensable fall into the utility category. They are (all of which can be added or removed at any time without breaking the game): Kerbal Engineer Redux - provides basic information, such as a delta-v and TWR readouts, useful in designing a spacecraft and executing a mission. Kerbal Alarm Clock - allows you to set alarms for uncoming events or opportunities so that you don't forget about them or accidentally time warp past them. Precise Node - permits the precise placement and manipulation of maneuver nodes; far more user friendly than the doing it in stock. Transfer Window Planner - An in-game version of this utility, http://alexmoon.github.io/ksp/, which is extremely helpful for planning interplanetary missions. Personally, I'm not a big fan of visually enhancements mods because they really hurt my game's performance, plus I tend to see too many annoying artifacts. I've tried several and ended up deleting all of them. However, if you think you'd enjoy a more visually appealing game experience, then by all means give them a try and see which ones you like. I also use several part packs, however I'll reserve suggesting anything until I know more about what you like to do. There is no need to add parts that you'll never use. You have to be careful removing a part pack because it will break any craft that uses those parts. However, part packs often work across multiple game versions without the need for upgrades. In addition to utility and part mods, the only other ones that I'm currently use are: Outer Planets Mod - adds four new outer planets and their moons. Realistic Atmospheres - replaces the stock atmospheres with more lifelike ones. Kopernicus - required for the above two mods to work. The above are the types of mods that add to or change the Kerbal solar system. They are also the ones that are often broken and require upgrading when a new version of KSP is released. However, you can often add or delete these mods without breaking a saved game. You just have to be careful because individual ongoing missions could be affected. For example, Realistic Atmospheres changes the heights of some atmospheres, so an orbiting spacecraft could find itself inside an atmosphere after adding this mod.

If it has a probe core onboard, then it will appear in the Tracking Station as a probe. The stuff that gets tagged as debris is the stuff that has no probe core, command pod, guidance unit, etc.

^this^ Plus I always roll to the correct takeoff attitude while descending. Just before landing rotate the craft so that it is in the orientation you want it to be for the latter takeoff. (edit) Assuming you want to takeoff due east using right yaw (D key), as you're falling rotate the vessel until the orange radial line on the NavBall (indicating North) is pointed straight downward.

I'm using Launcher.exe to start my game and I'm getting the 64-bit version. Do you know how to make it give me the 32-bit version?

Also, if you haven't already accounted for it, don't forget that that's the radius of the SOI, not the altitude.

(emphasis mine) The plane change is where we are so different. I get 938 m/s to transfer from 70 km to SOI, so it looks like we're the same there. But for a 54 degree plane change at apoapsis, I calculate a Δv of only 23.4 m/s. I think you have an error in there somewhere. I agree with the 2048 m/s number as well, so there's something funny in either the way you are calculating the plane change at apoapsis, or in the way you are computing the velocity at apoapsis. For a 70km x SOI orbit, I compute an apoapsis velocity of 25.7 m/s, so a 54o plane change is, 2*25.7*sin(54/2) = 23.4 m/s.

Same here. When I make plane changes around Kerbin they are almost always small, thus I don't mess around with raising my apoapsis.

@GoSlash27, I get what looks like a exponential function that confirms what @Red Iron Crown posted. (There's no point in extending the curve beyond a 60o plane change because we've reached the SOI.) I'm not seeing the abrupt change between 53o and 54o that you are. I'm using the vis viva equation to compute the Δv for raising and lowering the apoapsis, and this formula for computing the plane change, Δv = 2*v*sin(θ/2).

But there's a diminishing margin of return as the Ap gets pushed higher and higher. This means there is a practical limit if not a mathematical one. I would say that the excessive time needed to execute the maneuver makes pushing the Ap out much past the orbit of Mun not worth the delta-v savings. For instance, the difference between executing a 90-degree plane change at the moon's orbit is only ~65 m/s more the performing it at the SOI. And for a 60-degree plane change the difference is negligible, only a couple m/s.

It really depends on how high the Ap is raised. If the Ap is raised to only a couple thousand kilometers, then you might be able to include as much as 3 degrees in burns 1 and 3. If the Ap is raised all the way out to Mun or beyond, then probably only about 1 degree. However, we're talking about small differences. If you did a couple degrees when the optimum is only 1 degree, you really barely added anything to your total delta-v.

About 2 degrees.

No

Yeah, defining or not defining some of those curves isn't likely to have any noticeable impact on how the game performs. Even if you default to the curves of the template, that just means that parts of your planet are likely to be a bit warmer or cooler than you intended. This will affect the amount drag and lift produced, but it will just seem like that's the norm and you won't even notice that it's a bit off. On the other hand, if you add or change the curves after you've been playing it a while, then you might notice some small differences. For example, if you are accustom to making precise landings, then you might notice that your landing site predictions are off. Or perhaps aerocapture and aerobreaking behavior has changed. Or the maximum g-forces that you're accustom to seeing might be a little different, or occur at a different altitude. These are subtle changes that would likely go unnoticed unless you were really paying close attention to these kinds of details.

I really have no idea, but if forced to put some numbers to it, I'll go with about a 3:2:1 ratio. 3 parts flying, 2 parts building, and 1 part testing. Testing could be considered flying, but I separate it because some of my testing is just massive data gathering. For example, I performed a bunch of aerocapture tests at Jool, Eve and Duna at different entry velocities and ballistic coefficients. This was not a test of any particular spacecraft or of any particular mission, it was just to produce a data base for future reference. The flying part is the time I spend flying actual missions to achieve goals, complete contracts, or collect science. That's just the breakdown of my time spent with KSP loaded up and running on my computer. I spend far more time outside of the actual game. I have no idea of the breakdown, but I would guess that 90% of my time related to KSP is spent with the game turn off. This includes time spent planning missions that I intend to fly, keeping notes, developing various spreadsheet and aids, developing and performing computer simulations to test and optimize vehicle and trajectory design, answering questions on the Forum, working on Mods (not only my own but also helping other people - mostly modeling atmospheres), writing Tutorials, updating the KSP Wiki, etc. I think I just like the idea of the game more than actually playing it.