Zeroignite

How about attaching a bunch of CaptainSlug\'s flares to the explosive bolts?

Because putting a solar panel on the roof of your car doesn\'t refill your gas tank. Solar panels produce electricity, not rocket fuel.

Is that the first time someone\'s gotten the BFE to orbit?

Here\'s my Mun candidate, Maxwell. It\'s made in Silisko Edition plus my tuned decouplers. I designed it to be the hopeful minimum for a working landing and return. The fuel and RCS budgets will both be pretty tight, so careful piloting will be needed. I\'m optimistic. Honestly I\'m kind of wondering why most people\'s moon stacks are so big. Tsiolkovsky\'s rocket rocket equation has severely diminishing returns even with agressive staging...

I would like this.

Resize those images.

I dig the new radial RCS tanks. What\'s especially nice is the scalabiliy; I don\'t need to pack any more than I think I\'ll need. They\'re especially great for lander stages. Consumption rates on the Golgathrust RCS blocks is reasonable, though the standard RCS seems on the low end IMO. Super-light decouplers were unexpected-- they weigh almost as little as struts! Not really sure how that affect gameplay other than possibly encouraging aggressive staging. It also means I\'ll have to rebalance the weights of my mod decouplers

I smell a Mun trip with no RCS challenge

I always have tons more RCS than I need... The Golgathrust block have pretty ridiculous fuel consumption, and are only really useful for 20-50km on a large rocket stack. Also, tiberion, RCS blocks are most effective when placed at opposite ends of a stack. Blocks in the middle don\'t create much of a turning moment, and just waste fuel. If it were me I\'d decrease the fuel in the service module to 75... to me, SE seems to be about encouraging efficient design.

Ok, that probe is badass. I was a little disconcerted when I saw the solar panels sticking out beyond the sun shield, then promptly went 'Oh. Duh.'

Moon is expected to me ~13.5Mm from Kerbin. HarvesteR\'s moon ascent method is 'Orbit, wait for Mun to appear on the horizon, then boost like hell towards it.' Docking isn\'t implemented yet, so it\'s direct ascent all the way. Mun escape velocity is, if I recall, 860m/s. Getting home shouldn\'t take a ton more than that.

You mean the same way you can\'t orbit or escape from Kerbin? Gravity doesn\'t suck.

Mainline KSP version added, check the first post in the thread. Interestingly, it seemed to work better with a linear-ish scale factor.

Works for me. If it\'s pressurized gas, they\'re probably more tank than propellant anyway.

Oooh, are those strapponable RCS tanks? What about the uneven radial tank drain thing?

Got it. Mainline version coming along soonish. The tuning will be less precise than the Silisko Edition because of the great variety of mod packs out there, but sticking with the powers-of-two scaling seems a safe bet.

Heya, I, for one, am tired of having decouplers that are as big as RCS tanks, and either cause a heavy boost stage to not move, or a light payload to go flying over the horizon. To remedy this, I made a series of graduated decouplers based on NovaSilisko\'s mini-decoupler from the SDIR pack, released here with Nova\'s permission. Jettison force is scaled for a variety of stacks, with masses increasing for the higher-force decouplers. At the low end, there\'s a null-force (violet) decoupler for precision payload launch; fire then gently scoot away with RCS. On the high end, the Zenith (red) version is enough to clear huge stacks quickly. Medium (green) is a drop-in replacement for the standard decoupler. Download: Tuned Decouplers (Main Edition) v1 For use with mainline KSP + mods. Tuned Decouplers (Silisko Edition) v1 This release is balanced for KSP Silisko Edition. Please let me know if you have issues or would like to suggest different settings. I\'d particularly like feedback on how the main version interacts with some of the other mods out there. Enjoy!

Not a glitch in the update, just a change in the way textures are handled that all mod parts were designed to be compatible with.

A bit of testing has shown me that aiming for a perokee of 30km results in very low G-loading (<3g) and single-pass capture, even from near-escape (3km/s plus) trajectories. I\'m confident that it\'ll work fairly well for a Mun-return capture. As far as killing horizontal speed while landing goes, I\'ll just quote what I myself said in the Mun Landers thread:

Because Silisko Edition is balanced completely differently than every other mod pack out there. The fuel/weight/thrust ratios are not compatable.

.craft files are all saved under \KSP\ships

Screenshots are important. I\'d rather look at screenies than download a ton of rockets.

I\'ve figured out an secret ninja trick to powered landings, specifically killing horizontal velocity. It\'s known that keeping your eyes on the navball is key for stable flight... and it turns out this is true for landings as well. When you\'re descending, you should see your retrograde vector icon hovering somewhere in the blue region. It\'s probably not where you want it though; if you have horizontal velocity, it\'ll be somewhere off to the side of the zenith. For safe landing, you want to have no horizontal velocity, and a low vertical velocity. To kill the horizontal velocity without fuss, just tilt your rocket a few degrees away from the zenith, towards the direction the retrograde vector is showing. With your descent engine on, this will scrub horizontal speed and you should see your retrograde vector creep inwards until your horizontal velocity is very close to zero. Then you don\'t have to worry about horizontal speed. Vertical speed is managed by balancing the throttle, using RCS as needed for small final-approach adjustments. Sadly the throttle control is a bit too widely quantized for real precision approach work. Ideally you want your speed to be 0 at altitude 0, but in practice a few m/s down is entirely acceptable. Hmm. Now I wanna fly an instrument landing

I still don\'t know what the 'firelarks' you\'re talking about are, but trying to jettison still-burning SRBs is something you just generally try to avoid. It usually makes a mess.

'This will probably either break or explode, but who cares, it\'s Kerbal Space Program.' This made me giggle... captures a lot of the KSP attitude better than most thing I\'ve seen.