Hotel26

This is the kind of route I had in mind (when I say water-hugging): It might not fit my own definition (in OP) of "circumnavigation" since most of it is south of the equator, but it would satisfy my thirst for scenery along the way. A better rule definition might be that the straight-line distance between landing points add up to 3,770 km. (Participants would just log lat/lon of all refueling points.) Alternatively, any trip that lands at the exact opposite point of the globe from the starting point, and then returns (by any route) is certainly as long as any circumnavigation, and this one is a very simple rule to apply.

Kerbin Helicopter Circumnavigation The Kerbin Helicopter Circumnavigation committee is pleased to announce the first Helicopter Circumnavigation fly-fest of Kerbin. All participants are welcome but must provide their own equipment, JET-A and support team. Objectives of your mission, should you accept it: • choose any location on Kerbin as starting point • fly by any route to the exact opposite side of the planet[1] • (check that opposite point is land, not water, before you depart) • publish photos/coordinates at the end of each leg, as you refuel • by all means, post photos along the way of peachy-keen scenery for your fans following your progress • having reached your opposite point, return to your starting point by any route you like, continuing to document progress on each leg • land at your starting point • congratulations, you will have covered at least 3,770 km in a chopper and entered a Hall of Fame of now-permanently one-handed aviators (as your right hand will remain clenched and useless forever) • you will receive a badge and the adulation of your aforesaid fans • You Must Use A Helicopter! For the purposes of this exercise, a Helicopter will employ main rotors, unlocked and spinning in a co-relatively fixed plane, at all times during flight, as its primary means of lift. Other forms of propulsion are permissible as long as the aircraft remains intact throughout the flight. Kudos will be awarded tacitly to participants who demonstrate endurance, good photography with a keen sense of natural beauty, as well as possibly innovative design features. (You are not required, however, to use equipment of your own design.) Participants are strongly encouraged to provide a map update of their progress. The one posted above can be downloaded and marked up as desired... Missions officially kick off on December 1st but participants may start any time they are ready. You are welcome to post progress in this topic or in your own dedicated thread, as you wish, and I will happily cross-link this topic to yours upon request. [1] as a working example, if you chose the KSC coordinates, 0° 6′ 9″ S / 74° 34′ 31″ W as your departure point, your trip opposite point would be: 0° 6′ 9″ N / 105° 25′ 29″ E. Kerbin Helicopter Circumnavigation Expedition Glorious Expeditioneers Honor Roll 2020-12-08 @ralanboyle Speed distinction: 4h 55m 2021-03-16 @xendelaar 2021-05-10 @Hotel26 20 Legs! (Duh.) (Those listed above are entitled to display this badge, e.g. in signature)

Respectfully, I wonder about this. For purely simple weather-vaning a potentially stronger counter-lift could easily be superior to a weaker but controllable force. This would depend upon whether the craft has a simple profile staying in or very close to Sfc Prograde during the lower atmospheric phase. This is often the case, excepting the relatively low-speed pitch-over maneuver. A higher total surface area might be quite superior to a lower control surface area, even if that's the whole part. Of course, there are some craft (e.g. boosting a winged payload) with an unavoidably near-neutral stability, that are not so simple and benefit from or require proactive control. With those, I anyway tend toward speed-limiting until reaching higher altitudes, since this (it seems to me) is the most reliable strategy. (Either that, or sometimes electing to use disposable shuttle fins.) As always: experimentation... lots of it.

This is Venus: on the launchpad; tail-docked for refueling in LKO; arriving at Eve, where it again refuels; after ejection of the first of 2 Hitchhiker personnel carriers. [click & arrows] Venus under chutes with a Hitchiker in the background; the Hitchhiker landing; Venus ascending after refueling and exchanging passengers[1]; second stage Vector. Refueling S2 in Low Eve Orbit and once more exchanging passengers; under chutes returning to the surface; first landing is 19 km to the East in the background; "who's got the flag?" Venus is an unusual ship. It takes 11 colonists down to the surface; brings 3 Veterans back out; and then takes another 3 colonists down on its final trip. In the shots above, Venus has an S3 that is Twitch-powered, but it will be removed, as it is unneeded. [1] The reusable Eve SSTO is KSP's Holy Grail, but why should that be? Here at Hotel26 Budget Space Exploration, our analysis shows that only three things need to come out of Eve: radio communication science Veterans Quoting our report: "The vast majority of Kerbals setting foot on Eve are colonists with a one-way ticket. Only the top brass get to visit and leave. Rank has its privileges." -> <-

Oh, are you equating G-force with thrust? If your "G-force" drops by 58.6%, that would equate to 0.8 kN thrust from the engine. On 4 RTG, I would expect 0.69 kN. Just over a third.

Add a very lightweight component that incorporates charge, such as an Okto2, instead of a battery. This does make sense about batteries because, e.g. a resource refiner will not operate directly on ore from a harvester: you have to have an ore tank, no matter how small to complete the circuit. How are you measuring the thrust on your Dawn, anyway? You can cross-check it by looking at accel when there is charge in the battery and the Dawn is operating with full thrust and then look at what the accel drops to when the battery is depleted. Are you looking at the indication in the Part Attribute Window?

Looking at stock parts in the Wiki, it says a Dawn requires 8.741 elect/sec and meanwhile an RTG can provide 0.75. So I've always figured that it takes 12 RTGs to charge a Dawn for full thrust (plus change). 4 RTGs would sustain 34% thrust? In any case, if you said it did the job, that's outstanding work. Please post it at KerbalX! Update: I guess the dV is feasible. I've just built a model with 36,000 units of Xe with mid-size drop tanks (96 + 2 in all) and KER is reporting 42.5 km/s dV. 0.30 m/s accel full and TWR 0.22. 12 RTG and no batteries. On the last two tanks, 1.22 m/s and TWR 0.87. Congratulations on your Jool run! And thanks for the inspirational work!

Impressive! What's your power source?

With the aid of Fredfry Kerman and my new Mongoose HETV high-energy test vehicle: I have been able to determine the orbital speed at Apoapsis and Periapsis of a) Moho and b) an HETV with apoapsis at 13.318 Gm (Kerbin altitude): alt: 3.949 Gm alt: 6.054 Gm Moho 18,278.8 m/s 12,185.9 m/s HETV 20,614.6 m/s 15,917.9 m/s dV 2,335.8 m/s 3,732.0 m/s There we have it. Thanks for signalling an alert, @Spricigo.

@VezbotAnd this link, courtesy Geonovast, then explains how to post those pictures, inline, in the forum.

Very nice-looking vehicle and definitely an own design you can feel proud of!! "Dragonfly" is an excellent name. [In Latin, it is Anisoptera.] Yes, landing, low-TWR craft requires a slightly different technique to land, doesn't it? Plenty of preparation and keeping the sink rate capped. (Are you running Better Burn Time?) And scooters, in general, are a hoot to fly. (I think you've now inspired me to take a squad of them to Minmus for full exploration there!) Thank you again, good sir, for your original suggestion for an ion-powered lander. Updating this for an entirely different topic: I'm planning on putting 5 of these into 6.1 Gm orbit around Kerbol. As well as providing a comms ring relay, they will assist with interplanetary transfers via "the Ring Route", by acting as a "truck stop".

Thank you for that. It is only my personal belief, and possibly a minority one, that, being unafraid of being wrong, in combination with assiduous open-mindedness and the willingness to easily give up a wrong position in favor of a better one, holds some considerable utility. Direct speech is good. (Opinion.)

These are words to the wise!! You are right. I was wrong. All we can say from the reasoning I was using above is that a craft with kerbin apoapsis, arriving at either moho periapsis or apoapsis will have a considerably higher speed than moho itself at those points. Which one has the least difference just depends. And as I now read in Laie's(?) Wiki tutorial, it is the PE that is better.

First of all, feel free to copy away!! And adapt how you like. I'd love to see what your ideas are, and also please show a screenshot, if you like, as it would be most interesting. You need 13 RTGs to power one Dawn at full thrust. that's a lot of weight which is OK for bigger ion-powered craft but won't work here. I use this solution in my DSRN V, as an example Or a combination of fuel cells and LFOX will work: see my Terrapin for the right ratio of fuel cells and LFOX to Dawn. In the early days, I used solar because it's 'free' energy, I thought. (e.g. Gossamer Anisoptera) I rarely use it now actually. I fell back to it for this craft because the payload (65kg Kerbal) was so light that it needed only a very light craft. The big disadvantage with solar is that you had better know where the sun is at all times and this can restrict your maneuvering; don't fly into shadows in e.g. canyons; and no night-flying (except through darkness while in stable orbit). As you can tell, I love ion-power. People assume that 'little thrust = little ship'. Check out my Magellan Cruiser, which is scaled up but still has the TWR to manage landings on the Mun. Or Coulomb. Finally, in deep space, TWR doesn't matter much if you can tolerate long 'burns' (I can). So you can use few Dawns on a bigger ship resulting in pitiful TWR but still accomplish magnificent things at the other end of the solar system. High-energy transfers are a good example of that. fwiw, I added a third tank to Dandelion and got over 9 km/s but lost the scooter feel, so my initial instincts on this one seem right to me. Finally: there is my avatar...

That said all the same things about Mt Everest (particularly the bit about the "inclination"). It got climbed anyway. "Because it was there". Now there are foot-traffic jams up there on that hill... Or it could be comparable to Mt Fuji. The Japanese say, "if you don't climb it once, you are crazy. If you climb it more than once, you are crazy."

To update this, I am now running a dress rehearsal on Plan C: going to Moho with no inclination burn. I figured this would be possible and went looking for it. It is here: https://wiki.kerbalspaceprogram.com/wiki/The_annual_and_reliable_Moho_Transfer_Opportunity Correcting a 7-degree inclination is cheaper in Moho's SOI than anywhere else, but as it turns out: I desire to arrive and stay in that 7-degree incline (relative to Moho), because it is still the ecliptic plane. If the dress rehearsal works (sending an Atlas mining rig), I would follow up with a NERV fuel tanker and a modest space station. Atlas would fill up, boost into a low Moho orbit (7-deg). The tanker would offload the fuel and take it out to the space station and fill it. Arriving ships (still in the ecliptic) would r/v with the space station, refuel, R&R, and then push on outward to the final destination. The old joke about the stopped clock having the correct time twice a day applies here. Twice in its year, Moho passes through the ecliptic and is available for capture or departure.

This is correct. Your dV expenditure is about bridging the difference in orbital speeds. Therefore, leaving Moho's at periapsis is a mistake because your orbital speed there (relative to Kerbol) is higher which makes that lower at the other side of your transfer ellipse. That would give you a bigger deficit to make up reaching Kerbin. Orbital speed at Moho's AP is closer to Kerbin's orbital speed. That is the difference you wish to attempt to bridge. (By the way, I think I was incorrect earlier in thinking you could get Ap and Pe markers for the target in Map View.)

Try: go to Map View and click Moho and set it as the target of your vehicle. I believe then that Moho's AP and PE markers should be shown in the yellow target orbit. (You've probably found that yourself, by now.) Haven't confirmed, but it's entirely possible that Moho's AP and PE just happen to coincide with its AN and PN. So @MZ_per_X1's departure point is "onto something". (I found this note actually searching for anyone who had already written about the following.) That would make this little KSP Kerbolar "graded puzzle" in Orbital Mechanics quite a pretty one! Instead of performing the expensive inclination alignment burn at high speed in the Kerbol (or Kerbin) orbit, wait for Kerbin to reach its equivalent point in its orbit to Moho's DN/PE, burn for a PE matching Moho's AP, arrive at Moho's AP and then burn retrograde until one more orbit will be synchronized with arrival at Moho's AP, albeit with 7 deg inclination relative to Moho when entering its SOI; much cheaper to fix in Moho orbit. As a bonus, you get to intercept Moho at its slowest-moving point. This is longer (but far easier and safer) than the fastest transfer,

I know this topic is somewhat in jest... But the early Kerbonaut fairly soon realizes that the Kerbolar system is a cleverly-graded set of puzzles in Orbital Mechanics. Dres is a challenge and a badge. In my case, the purpose of Dres is to give me something to look forward to: "haven't been there, haven't done that". Not yet. Nor Eeloo.

The cleverly-named Dandelion, which I just built, inspired by your idea, has TWR:1.55 on the Mun, and can be landed. At the time of this shot, it still had 6.4 km/s. Day-flying only...

Latest FedEx shipment arriving at the Mun: 8 Rodeo Luna rocket bikes. In other big news... It's been 12-14 years since my last computer. I built it myself. It's true that the motherboard and CPU got an upgrade (an Intel I5) from work surplus parts a few years ago, but it's been limited still to 8GB. As my Orbit world ("save") has expanded, 8GB fills up in an hour or less. So, tomorrow... So, tomorrow... (speaking of FedEx) my new deal arrives. Ryzen 9 and 64GB of memory. "Take that, KSP!!" And, of course, I expect it will. Everything's backed up onto one disk. I pull that disk out, slip it into the new computer and boot up. One more sleep!

The most frequently-asked question I get about my new Rodeo Luna personal excursion vehicle: is: how do you refuel it for continued use? Good question, too, so I thought I'd put together a couple of slides: The first shows Hertfree Kerman demonstrating docking the Luna to a Sparrow tug, which now comes standard with dual Omnidocks. In the second, Hertfree docks his motor on one of the four claws on a Goblin mining rig. Hertfree recommends landing close-by first, to adjust the thruster power down to 50%, to provide finer control of sink rate. Ensure SAS Radial Out is set, regain a little altitude and maintain level flight, simply 'jinking' the attitude controls to control horizontal progress toward the target dock. QED!

I have to think that this was a Kraken attack and one of the minor, non-explosive, non-part-hurling kind that's all over very quickly and can go unnoticed. A little bit of fast shaking for a fraction of a second and then: stress relieved and everything seemingly still in place. If this is the case, there will be no remedy except to retreat to a save and experiment with auto-strutting.

Yes. Technically, they are 'werebats'... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vombatus_ursinus_-Maria_Island_National_Park.jpg Generally docile unless you lock gaze for more than a second or so... then, well, considerably dangerous.

Welcome to the forum!! Well done embarking upon the course of hands-on learning and kudos for selecting an ambitious project... Take a look at: Runge-Kutta, Euler's method, predictor-corrector and Simpson's rule. There's another technique related to those that is tickling my memory[1] While none of these may be exactly what you want, reviewing them will lead in interesting directions. If you have access to a good (university-level) library, Chapter 4 of "Fundamentals of Astrodynamics" may be very helpful. Good luck. [1] ah, "leapfrog integration"