Kesa

Hey, where did you think the Kerbal from rescue mission contract came from?

Yeah it breaks physics. Currently, only lvl 1 pilot are usefull, engeneers should be able to repair chute an lvl 1.

Of course, playing with real world rocket on planet 10 times smaller than ours whith the corresponding tiny atmoshpere would be easy.

This mission is actually doable without targeting from the map (yet very difficult). If you have show vessel labels enabled in your settings, you can target a ship that is 60 km away or closer by double clicking it.

that's What I did, but then I could only do one contract at a time until I unlock the jet engine and intake to complete the survey I took along with the test part contract (I don't like canceling )

Kind of cheating reguarding that the games has radial engines and multicoupler (and cubic griders). But I must admit that the logic in which they appear in the tech tree does not makes sens for me, and that your cluster looks quite good

For early career aerial survey mission, you can simply design a VTOL vertically, pretty much like a rocket, with plane fuselage instead of lfo tanks and jet engines instead of rocket engines. add some chute atop of it, and landing gear at bottom, so that the engine does not touch the ground. (grider segments if you don't have, but the tech of landing gear really worth it). you may add wings for aesthetic and efficiency purpose, if you know how to make plane. Oh, and don't forget the air intakes (I've been almost stuck taking a 'test jet engine' contract + a survey yelling Hurray, 90 science less needed to make some juicy survey, not realizing I did not have any intakes available)

If you're 700 m/s short, I guess you can almost land but not come back. Why not land a engineer/scientist on EVA, plant a flag and send a rescue mission, say... later...

The strating cash slider on custom difficulty should go high enough to unlock the tier II buildings.

On 0.90, made a rescue Kerbal mission with all facilities at tier 1, and tech level at tier 3 : - two command pods on a rocket that weight less than 18t (it had something like 4800 m/s in dv) - no manoeuver nodes!!

KSP physics also include bugs, so it can do things regular Physics can't. And it IS funny.

The first equation give the exact dv requirement for achieving a speed of v0 for an upward acceleration in abscence of air, that's why it is a rough approximation for orbit. With TWR = ~1.6 and v0 ~2300m/s, it gives 4555m/s, which is, astonishely, the actual typical cost of orbiting with a typical TWR, because errors compensate them selves : (1) the atmospheric drag is not taken on account (2) the TWR often raise up to 2 or more in the 10 000 first meters, as the fuel of the first stage deplete (should reduce drag) (3) Though TWR of the mid and last stages are often significantly smaller than 1.6, accelerating horizontally saves alot compared to accelerating vertically So it's not drag, it's drag + desired v, but should be used with caution. I don't expect it to be true on any other body than Kerbin, and it is an over estimation for achieving orbit on an airless bodies, and a quite dramatic one if TWR is between 1 and 6. Since there is no TWR in it, I think the second is related to transfer cost, so is not related to ascent. This two equations does not describe the same gravity drag : the first one describe loss due to vertical trusting, where the second describes... Well, I don't know, I'd be glad to know where it comes from. During transfer, you burn horizontally (prograde and retrograde), so no gravity loss like described by 1st equation or by some of it's refinements. However, it cost more to go from one circular orbit to an other one and then to athird one than to go from the first circular orbit directly to the third. That may be the kind of gravity loss described by the second equation.

Just a question related to yours, does the scientist create science, or does they only fasten science for experiences like goo for which not all science is gained in one recovery/transmission? edit : by fasten, I mean that fewer goo would be required to get the max of it in a specific situation

It greatly depends on design. You must take account of decoupler cost, and sometimes heat sinker. I think the uglyness of the craft should also be taken on account. For example, between my skipper and my jumbo 64, I will never use TR 2 V stack decoupler, despite it being the cheapest end lightest decoupler. It depends of whether you want the most effective but ugly craft, or weather you want a good looking craft that cost only few hundreds more. (and it also depends of what is ugly for you)

I don't know if any body used it, but there are some weird Biomes placement in 0.25, especially on mun (that can be seen on Kerbalmaps). Don't know if it has been changed in .90, I hope no, since I will use them, either just for me or for completing this challenge, but if the biomes placement differs from .25, they might be less things like frontier between 4+ biomes, collecting mun polar biomes without being on one poles, or having all kerbin biomes but 2 in a 60 km radius, most of them both splashed and landed... And the challenge might be diffferent.

I'm not sure but I think you also lose a very little few of reputation, but nothing close of the penality.

Oh! I just remembered what escape velocity means. It's the velocity at which mechanichal energy (potential + kinetic) becomes positive, therefore you are on escape trajectory no matter the direction of your velocity. It only depends of altitude. So if you only want to escape the gravity of a body in a single burn, you can point at any direction, the theoritical DV will be the same. If you only want to leave SOI, in the case of mun, SOI radius/ body radius is 10 so one can prove that to leave SOI, we need sqrt(9/10) times the dv of an escape burn going straight up, and sqrt(90/101) times that same dv going horizontally (using energy conservation and Kepler's 2nd law), so no noticeable difference. The only differences between paths will be loss, and are well summed up by arkie several posts above.

Great work. It should worth it to make it for escape with desired velocity. But, if you are just to leave the SOI of a planet, what is the "direct elliptical ascent"? The ellipse with AP just passing SOI that has the less energy (therefore the less velocity at see level) actually is the degenerated one obtained by verticle launch. Also, does the parking cost include gravity loss? edit : Does direct "elliptical ascent" dv requirement takes into account TWR and gravity loss? (cause it would make sense for me)

Well, I was only talking of the centrifuge force, which actually is g * vh^2/v0^2 (vh^2/v0^2 is dimensionless! so can't be substract to g). If you want to pair it with the gravity, then you have to substract it to the gravity and have : apparent gravity = g * (1 - vh^2/v0^2). Then you should be good with your sim . I'll update my post to make it clearer.

It's a good idea to start small. About the Center Of Mass/Lift/Trust (1) COL very close to COM, so that the plane don't flipp up (COL too forward) or down (COL to backward), COL slightly behing COM so the plane naturally stabilize toward velocity. (2) COT toward COM, quite obvious for simple plane, nearly impossible for stock assymetric shuttle (3a) Constant COM : the COM of you fuel tank must be the same that the COM of your whole craft, so that (1) and (2) stay true over time. This can be useful. (3b) Symetric fuel flow : if you are having several tanks, you don't want the fuel in front of the craft to be depleted before the one at the back. Three ways: building sideway, balancing fuel preferably not manually, and the stock way (my favourite). For how many wings, fuel and TWR, it's alot of guess and trial, but you can start with TWR > 1.2, and enough fuel to take off before the end of the runway. Also position at least 3 landing gear, and preferably 2 or more in the back, since they will likely be the last to take of and the first to touch down, and not too far behind COM, so your craft can steer up (and take off). Lastely, some advice for high altitude : (1) Have alot of intakes. It's try and guess, but an equivalent of 10 ram air intakes per engines is not too much (2) basic jet die quickly upon speed and altitude. They can only build altitude, but no velocity, so go almost straight upward if you want to use them for ssto (3) Advance jets : climb slow (~50-100m/s vertically), you will need horizontal speed to feed your air intakes and fight gravity. You should have burning aerodynamic effect. (4) Throttle back when cutoff to reactivate engines and get the most of them. (5) multiple engines : (4) is vital. Also shutdown some engines before throttling down, external first (those that makes more spins upon assymetrical cutoff). (5b) neat trick : Orient your engines so that they do not push completly forward, but slightly toward COM.

also space bar to set rotation to its default position, which is in your case, what you search.<br><br>And the next time you run ksp, it may actually have been "fixed" (better VAB in 0.90.0)

Don't bother the inaccurate prediction of trajectory. Halfway, or whenever it becomes less tiwtchy, make a correction burn (guess what you have to do with manoeuver nodes), so that you get an encounter. when you get closer, make another one to have your future pe where you want to have it. The sooner the correction, the cheaper, but also the less accurate, so you may need several. For Minmus, it should not take more than 10m/s also, slow warp time when changing SOI. *1 is ideal but *100 still is fine, depending of the body. *1000 or above, you can miss an encounter you should have. at max warp, you can even miss collision with bodies! (at least the last time it happend to be, which was not in .25)

No. If ports are really aligned, both ports are connected. You can try by building it in VAB : the physically attached port will say "decouple node" on rmb, the other one will dock just after launch and say "undock" (I don't how it works with tree structure though)

Wanted to include it upon saying you were damn right for the comparison method, I just forgot

You can put LFO engines on a plane as well as jet engines on rocket, and make quite efficient and fully reusable rocket SSTOs. However, planes are more efficient than rocket precisely because they are rockets with wings and smaller engines. There are different paradignms for making planes, but I've seen very good SSTOs (Wanderfound ones I think), with TWR at launch barely above 1 or even under, because advanced jet engines are weak at see level. The lift provided by wings help it flying though. The equivalent rocket can not launch vertically without the help of extra expendable booster, or of heavier engines, making it less efficient.