Terwin

Have you managed a stock SSTO from sea-level on Eve?

I seem to be having problems with trajectories, with my last landing I was aiming half way to the 'Oops too short' mountain range, and I still landed in the water. I am slowly moving my target area further and further back, but I either splash down past the KSC or land before the Oops Too Short mountains. No air brakes as of yet and I can't usually open any chutes higher than about 6km, so not quite sure what I am doing wrong. (I will often try to point surface - radial as long as I can to help slow down in the thinner air, then try to minimize my pro/retrograde time, usually with some sort of spin) On the plus side, I still get > 90% recovery, so there is that...

Brought home my first Mun and Minmus landers in my new game, they let me unlock Labs, ISRU and Nervas, so I took a 3 station missions(Kerbin, Minmus, Mun orbit), Tourists, and 3 rescue missions(so far), and launched a 500K Mk3 rocket into orbit capable of holding 22 kerbals(needed 16+ science), 1500 ore(missions require 1050 and 400), and 10K liquid fuel(Minmus station needs 6K), all pushed by 5 nervas. Loaded up every Kerbal I had, and set out to get everyone up to 3 stars(Mun flag, Minmus flag, Kerbol Flyby). Expected profits > 4M. I also experimented with KAS/KIS and managed to successfully remove the struts and decoupler from the core of my lifter stage(still ~ 50 fuel), putting a docking port in place of the decoupler. (the decoupler floated off as it did not fit in my inventory, next time I'll try a parts bin instead of just putting parts in kerbal inventories) Unfortunately it looks like the life support recycler I used is not up for supporting the 10+ kerbals on board, fortunately I still have ~300 days worth of supplies for a mission that should take less than a month.(UKS) I was thinking about leaving it up in orbit until I got a contract that requires I land 400 Minmus ore on Kerbin. Of course the next one is expected to have a few Gigantors instead of lots of shielded 1x6's, and that should make mining and refining go more smoothly. Currently transiting from Mun to Minmus after visiting a couple new Mun biomes. Expecting to get that last Minmus Flats biome when I arrive, now that I have Minmus mapped. Thought about taking them all the way to Duna for 4 stars, but my engine count was designed for easy Mun liftoff, and can manage ~2.7m/s/s, not Duna liftoff needing > 2.9m/s/s; even if 4km/s of delta-v would probably handle the trip quite well. Now that I have the tech to go places, I should really set up a demonstration base a couple km from KSP so I can figure out exactly how all this UKS stuff works...

Actually it is very realistic. Solar concentrators can easily make things much hotter than they would get just sitting in the sun. As the solar panels are collecting solar energy from a larger area than the area of the ISRU, and the ISRU has a smaller surface area than the area for which that energy is being collected, it would be very unrealistic for the ISRU not to get hotter than the solar panels that are sittingin the sun with all that surface area to radiate away heat(assuming the efficiency of the panels is higher than the ratio of ISRU surface/panel surface). Several large solar panels feeding a small ISRU that is using that energy, is just an alternative form of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power I'm looking forward to the option of smaller ISRU, and the mass loss during conversion should make it an interesting trade-off, even for ships with plenty of radiators. (currently I use ore tanks as auxiliary fuel storage once I have reached my first non-kerbin body, and the mass loss during refinement will mean I need to consider just how useful having that extra mass along will be while I lift off from the current body... (suspect it will still be useful to lift off with full ore from small bodies like Minmus, Bop, Pol, Gilly, and Ike, but not from heavier bodies like Tylo, Lathe or Eve, and The Mun, Dres, Eeloo, Duna, and Vall will depend on your specific configuration) I am already speculating about potential designs for refillable scansats...(currently I use a single nuke engine pushing Mk2 liquid fuel parts with attached scanners and such, usually with a pair of Mk2 drop-tanks that make it look like a sandwich when horizontal, but the ability to refuel a small nuclear ship on Gilly, Ike, Bop, Pol, Minmus, or Eeloo could be very interesting...)

The last mission I flew in my previous game(started under 1.2, finished under 1.4) visited all the planets outisde the orbit of Kerbin(Duna/Ike, Dres, Jool/Vall/Bop/Pol, Eeloo) Mission took ~ 9 years by the time they made it home. The mission before that went to the inner planets(Duna/Ike, Gilly with Eve upper atmosphere, Moho). It was also supposed to go to the outer planets, but it was dependent on solar panels for mining/refining, so I launched the other one with a 2k charge/sec nuclear reactor on board(also using a 2K charge/sec electric engine with ISP ranging from 3K to 16K, both from Near Future). Needed to send a fuel probe/rescue vessel to have enough fuel to land on Moho for refueling, even with the 1500 ISP engine from Atomic age. In my current game I have been to Mun and Minmus, and my current vessel is loaded with all my kerbals along with my newly researched ISRU and nuclear engines to get everyone up to 3 stars with my first visit to the Kerbol SOI(currently transiting from Mun to Minmus with 3km/s in the tank at 2.5m/s/s) I have seriously thought about taking them all to Duna/Ike on this trip, but I want to take UKS and EPL gear with me on my first trip and none of that is on board.

Some call them 'roots' as the money symbol looks a bit like a square root sign. Got Kerbinn station + Minmus station contracts along with a 'test twin boar around Minmus' and Explore Minus contracts in my new game so I sent up a station to test a decoupler(used asparagus staging to have a reason to decouple around 11km) and get the twin boar booster into orbit around Minmus (finished off the fuel of that stage in getting the orbit more circular), then went ahead and landed in several biomes before heading home(Landed in 4 biomes including the poles, jet-packed to 4 others for EVA and surface samples). Failed to get the decoupler contract, but got the others. Then I sent up a similar rocket(without side tanks) to rescue from LKO and 2 from mun orbit plus an orbital tourist. Hoping that last rescuee is a scientist so I can re-set my goo and materials study making a Mun landing more worthwhile.

Something to consider: If you have a bit of ore when you start, then leave focus while both driling and refinement are going on, the catch-up will usually give you all of the ore+ all of the refinement product during the catch-up calculations, and it will not even take electric charge. I use this for quick refills when I landed on the dark side of a planet. Start mining then leave until I have some ore built up, then start refining and come back after I have calculated my tanks should be mostly full. When I come back ore and tanks both get increased by the catch-up even though ore should have been long since depleted. I generally refine LFO+LF+O when I do this and even if the tanks are not yet full, the ore is much higher when it should have dropped like a stone. Note: not sure what the fuel cell will do to this, I recommend deactivating it

When I was pushing a Class C with an electric drive in my Outer Grand Tour ship, I found that starting those burns just before bed time and using KAC with a pause-game alarm set to go off a few minutes before the burn was due to end worked well. Just be careful of SOI changes, as apparently the heading of your burn is relative to the current body, so changing SOI will change the absolute direction of your burn target.

I almost did this(there was one Duna biome that I could not find without scanning the planet first, as it turns out it is at the boundary between Lowlands and Ice caps). All I had to do was design the lander to be able to take off from Duna without using aerodynamic lift and Ike was trivial. (I had ISRU, so plenty of fuel to waste flying around Duna without aerodynamic lift) Admittedly I was using the Atomic Age nuclear lightbulb engine(1500 ISP), I expect it to be harder this time around as I am not using Near Future or Atomic age engines. (on the plus side, UKS should let me build hoppers on-site once I have a colony established)

You need not be on the roof. Just touch your Kerbal or your craft to the building in question and you can generally get the biome for that building. (not all buildings have their own, see the KSC biome list on the wiki for a listing) (needing to land on top of every building in the KSC would have made the home-bound caveman challenge much more difficult) Be careful with the fuel tanks and other delacate looking structures though, as it is easy to hit them too hard and destroy them. I like just putting a wheel/landing leg on the cement base-plate of those buildings instead of touching the actual structure parts. I find that small landing gear + the first jet engine will get you around the KSC pretty easily, and retracting the landing gear is an easy way to rest the structure of your rover on the base-plate of a building for getting crew-reports and other vessel based science. (those little side-entry stairways make good places for EVA reports and surface samples for the buildings that have them)

This is why I use my cargo doors as auxiliary air-brakes during descent(not sure if it helps, but at least all the contents can contribute drag). Got to be careful not to allow too much heating, but usually I have enough air-brakes that it is not a big risk. On to my exploits for this past weekend: Ejected My Outer Grand Tour from Pol using about 60% of my LFO for improved acceleration and d-v for my LH2 engines. Had an adjustment burn shortly after leaving Jool's SOI, and then drifted back through Jools SOI on the way to Eeloo. During the transit, I scanned all the remaining moons of Jool using my Jool Scansat probe, leaving it in orbit of Lathe. While that was going on, my Scansat Dres finally arrived(years after my manned vessel left), scanned the planet and headed off to Jool as I still had > 5KM/s and I did not think the Scansat Jool would have enough d-v to finish.(Tylo has about 0.5% left for the high-res scanner, but that is the only thing left for it to do when it arrives ~ 6 years after leaving Dres) More than a year and a half after laving Pol, my Outer Grand Tour reached it's final planet: Eeloo. Used the narrow-band scanner to scout out landing locations once I got within 500 km, Could not locate the biomes easily without any scanning having been done, but I did manage to find some good science while I was there. Much easier to land on than Bop and Pol with their uneven surfaces. Managed to find Lowlands, Midlands, Glaciers and Ice Chasm biomes before lifting off and heading for home. Having lifted off fully fueled, I burned off all of my remaining LFO in the ejection burn with a plan to refuel on Minmus before landing on Kerbin. During the 2.5 year return voyage, the Eeloo scansat arrived and scanned the planet, finding all those hard to locate biomes and ore pockets while the manned lander was on it's way home. As Dres, Eeloo, Bop and Pol were all scanned after the manned ship left, I suspect I need to plan my missions better in my next game. Finally, the Outer Grand Tour arrived home, 9 years and 190 days after it departed towards Duna to rescue a couple of stranded scientists. ---------- Then I started up my new EPL game. After my first couple orbital missions(one to get to orbit and get most of my Kerbals to 1 star, then a second to get my last pilot to 1 star and rescue a stranded kerbal, both with tourists loaded up in all empty seats), it occurred to me that I am still stuck on my Grand Tour techniques, and there is no need for me to barely eek-by using single stage rockets for brief missions where multi-stage will work better. (This is something I should have thought of during the 5km EVA trip to the stranded kerbal and the 10km trip back to the rocket which barely had enough fuel for a 5km near-miss as I wanted it to also be able to de-orbit) On the plus side, the stranded kerbal was in a workshop piece, so with KIS/KAS I should be able to add docking ports and use it as part of an orbital construction site. tonight: multi-stage launches and rescue missions! (including one in an orbit outside that of the Mun) (perhaps I will also set up the beginnings of my UKS testing base a couple KM from the KSC)

Did a couple landings on Bop, finally finding a place with an incline of only 6 degrees(as opposed to the >20 degrees everywhere else) and managed to refuel. Then I did a fly-by of Lathe, including an atmospheric dip(all of 50m inside he atmosphere) to get upper atmosphere data. Discovered I already had most of the upper orbit data, but managed to get some lower orbit biomes I did not have before. After that I headed over to Pol, took a couple burns to get an intercept, but finally managed to hit the SOI. After Bop, landing on Pol was quite easy, Managed to top up in the lowlands(6% ore), touch-down in the midlands(2% ore, highly inclined), and finished up in the highlands(7% ore) where I topped off all my tanks in preparation of heading out to Eeloo. After getting into Pol orbit(using a mid-level thrust setting of my VASMIR to get a TWR of >2), I played with maneuver nodes until I managed to get an Eeloo fly-by(tried to take advantage of the Oberth near Jool, but the other moons were in the way). I'm planning to burn half my LFO fuel as part of the ejection burn, as half a tank was plenty for landing on Duna without chutes and I have > 37 tons of LFO at ~300ISP vs ~20 tons of LH2+Ore at 3.4K to 16K ISP on a 95 ton ship, so burning up ~20 tons of LFO during my ejection burn should greatly improve my acceleration and range. (I should still have > 2/3 my LH2+ore left when I hit the Eeloo SOI even without burning the LFO, but I am keen on cutting down those burn times as I have 2.5km/s of burning to do and my current acceleration is less then 0.7m/s/s) I am hopeful that by the end of the weekend I will have my Kerbals back on Kerbin and be starting my UKS+EPL game with life support.

I generally launch a single vessel that handles transit, landing, ISRU, etc. The only thing I dump is the launch stage(usually with parachutes and stage recovery). Not terribly cost efficient or fuel efficient, but takes very little play-time to set up. I do this for everything from biome hopping to base missions to training missions to interplanetary exploration vessels. The biggest change I make outside the cargo hold is a pair of landing gear on the underside of the Mk3 fuselage when I need to use the nose-claw to pick up something landed for return to Kerbin.

I finally got my asteroid/fuel depot in a reasonable orbit of Tylo(~50x80), only to discover that I do not have enough d-v to land on Tylo. (at least not enough fuel for my Thuds, plenty of d-v for the VASMIR but that can only give me ~1m/s/s and that does not help much on Tylo) So I am giving up on my plans to visit Tylo and Lathe with this craft. Headed back to Vall because I forgot to take pictures, then I set out for Bop. After I explore Bop, I'll probably swing by Lathe to get orbital and upper-atmospheric data before heading to Pol and finally Eeloo.

As one of those that refuses to accept Kerbal deaths, non-lethal LS is the only option to have consequences that don't have me going outside the game to avoid them.(cheat menu, persistence editing, mod removal, etc). I have already copied my Caveman stock install and added the mods I plan to use, but I am still on the fence about using civilian population or relying solely on rescues to provide additional crew for my off-world bases... (my current game, where I am trying to finish an outer grand-tour prior to starting my new game currently has > 50 Kerbals all at 3+ stars(most at 4 stars), so I am suspecting rescues wil probably be enough, but may require much shuttling around to get everyone where I want them.(and I should probably add in that off-kerbal leveling mod so not everyone I rescue needs to visit Kerbin to be useful)

I like ISRU because it allows me to do things like Biome hopping on Joolian moons and to bring along an asteroid as a droppable fuel pod without needing to send out such pods from Kerbin. My rockets are probably not terribly efficient, and I can still do things like visit every solid body outside of Kerbin's orbit(not 100% sure about Lathe and Tylo, but I hope to verify it for Tylo tonight). I can also 'just go' and not need to worry about having enough fuel for the entire itinerary, so long as I can manage my longest expected leg.

Got a fair bit done since my last posting. First I took my 95 ton fully loaded ship and pushed a Dresteroid with 190 tons of ore(plus 15 tons of structure, Class C) from Dres to Jool with an acceleration of 0.11m/s (time acceleration does not work because it causes too much wobble, it is was a multi km/s thrust, so I left it over night with KAC to pause near the end of the burn. Unfortunately after leaving the SOI the target moved and it thrusted a while in the wrong direction... sigh. Fixed it and got to Jool in about 280 days instead of the original 200 days. Asteroid now around 140 tons of ore). Did a lot of braking at Jool periapps, letting me get a fly-by of Tylo to get me in close to Vall(the planned trajectory did not have a Tylo Periapps, and I did not notice that until I fond out why... fortunately I had a quick-save far enough back to fix things easily and close enough not to be frustrating). After I got a nice close orbit of Vall(~30km), dropped off the asteroid then visited a couple biomes(lowlands had ~1% ore, so I hopped to Midlands with ~5%). Refueled everything then waited for the Scansat polar orbit to be over-head and met up with that(had the scan sat use most of it's remaining fuel coming down to a lower orbit). Topped off the scansat and thrusted to an equatorial orbit to release it. Sent off the scansat to scan Tylo then landed back on Vall to visit the Highlands(another ~1% ore area) and refuel in the Midlands again. Got the scansat in a nice polar orbit of Tylo to start detailed scans and do an ore scan. Hooked my refueled Grand Tour back up with my asteroid (renamed to 'OGT Drop-pod 1') and headed over to Tylo for my next stop(did not mine the asteroid for this transit, but expecting to need it for next transit). Currently in a high orbit(something like 110x330) around Tylo, expecting to bring it below 50x50 before attempting a landing(and making a named save in case I miscalculated and this ship cannot get back to orbit) Scansat has finished Ore, Biome and low-res scanning and is currently at 750x750 to finish high-res scanning before heading elsewhere Jool image album(more to be added, may need to return to Vall as I forgot to take pics...)

Careful, apparently the claw does not work on things with a SOI, so you will need to balance the ship on the drills(in their extended condition of course). Just be careful not to break them off...

Got my scansat around Moho and scanned with all 4 instruments(low-res, milti-spectral and hi-res from Scansat, plus stock resource scanner). Still has roughly 6km/s so I might be able to get elsewhere, but nothing closer than Dres needs scanning, so might as well leave it there to return temperature scans when data from Moho is contracted. Next I noticed that all of that science I was converting into Rep did not seem to do anything( 'aggressive negotiations' @ 100% said my rep was at 924, exactly the same as it was before I returned the Moho ship with science going to Rep at 100% as my only policy, also did lots and lots of lab returns at 250-320 science each since starting that policy), so I killed the 100% science-> rep policy and started a 50% science-> rep policy. (note: money has gone from ~62M to ~68M so perhaps it went there?) After that my Outer Grand Tour(only Kerbaled vessel at the moment) reached Dres. Landed in a couple biomes(lowlands had < 1% ore, so went elsewhere and found Ridges with > 6% ore), collecting data from each then lifted off. During this time I noticed that I could drop the production of my nuke plant down to 0% and then pop it back to 100% without a warm-up period, so I may do that while in a planetary SOI to save time, of course I also accidentally left it at 100% for a couple weeks while meeting up with the asteroid below and burned up 30 times as much uranium as I had previously used. Good thing I have plenty) Found a Class C asteroid in orbit and topped off all my tanks(well, I left a 10 unit margin of empty ore tank to avoid accidentally wasting any), and it still has 190 tons of ore. Identified a trajectory that will get me to Jool in about 200 days, it just needs about 5km/s of acceleration(and probably a similar amount of deceleration once I get there) Acceleration with the asteroid is a whopping 0.11m/s/s so that will be quite the burn(and I can't just leave it to burn over night as the fuel tank apparently only holds 1km/s of LH2 when hauling around this massive asteroid(largest I have ever captured actually, the others were a class A and a class ) Well, having too much ore on an ISRU ship is hardly a terrible thing, just inconvenient. Wonder if there will be enough left to use it as a refueling station among the inner moons of Jool...

I biome-hop, extensively.(all biomes on Kerbin, Mun, and Minmus done, all but one biome on Duna was done by the first ship to get there, that ship then did all Ike biomes. First ship to Eve scraped the atmosphere for an extra biome after visiting all the Gilly biomes, then went and got all but 3 Moho biomes[could not find them due to no scanning done before hand]) Even now, I am a bit uncertain about letting my ship in orbit of Dres leave without visiting more biomes(even with the community tech tree completley filled out and nothing left to spend science on). I already visited 2 Dres biomes and drained them of their data, then went and grabbed a class C to use as a drop-tank for my trip to Jool, and I am still looking back at Dres thinking about all those neglected biomes.

Lounging about the astronaut complex regaling all the 3 and 4 star Kerbals with tales of his visits to Gilly, Moho and and that dip into the atmosphere of Eve. (the 4 stars have already been to Duna, so no need to go over that bit).

First I returned my Grand Training(training mission to Duna with 3 rescues picked up around Duna) safely to Kerbin, putting me at 51 kerbasl at the KSC, of which 4 have 5 stars, 17 have 3 stars and the rest have 4 stars(the two orange suits are of course at 5 stars, with the other two orange suits heading towards Dres) First approach was a bit off, as I realized I was going retrograde when I tried to get an equatorial orbit, so I kicked out to Mun where I landed(and topped off fuel, just to be safe) then came back and made a splash landing a couple dozen km from KSC. Next I captured my Jool scansat at Vall and started scanning the surface(low-res, multi-spectral and ore scanning complete, now just trying to finish up high-res scanning. Only a few hundred d-v left so I don't think I'll be able to take it to Pol or Bop before the Outer Grand Tour arrived to refuel it. After that I adjusted my refueled Duna Scansat's trajectory to hit the Eeloo SOI. I have a fine-tuning burn in another 6 years or so, then I should capture for a polar orbit of Eeloo for scanning. (also renamed it to Scansat Eeloo to prevent future confusion) Finally I did an inclination burn on my Scansat Eve(now renamed Scansat Moho), so it should be meeting up with Moho fairly soon to scan for those three biomes I missed on my first visit. I think I misread the 15K science converted to rep from the Grand Tour return, looks like it may have been 1500 or 15K rep, not science. I was considering sending off another training mission to get those 17 3-stars up to 4 or 5 stars, or to take those 30 4-stars up to 5 stars, but I think I'll just finish my outer grand tour and start a new game with the Extra-planetary launchpads mod(and none of those high-isp engines that I have been using so much of late), perhaps I'll even manage to land and return a Kerbal from Eve with that mod. (I may cheat a little and start with a copy of my caveman challenge save game to skip past any early grinding)

I am planning on switching out several mods for my next game(after my outer grand tour visits all the planets it can return from, which is hopefully everything with a surface outside Kerbin's orbit) Adding: Extra-planetary lunch pads(and affiliated mods) Some sort of life support(but not one that kills kerbals) Removing: sounding rockets(I abuse those cardboard science modules too much) Stage recovery(If I need the funds I can try for manual recovery) Atomic age(love the lightbulb but I over-use it) Near Future(might add it back in later, but want to see how far I can get without all those nifty high-isp engines)

I generally go with the 'come to a relative stop above your target position and slow your descent in two or more stages'(depending on how many m/s I need to bleed off). Does not work so well with an atmosphere, but great for most of the Kerbol system. If you have ISRU, you don't even need to worry about wasted fuel, you just need to make sure you have enough to land and you can get as much as you need. Also, if you end up away from your target destination, you can always do a ballistic trajectory, come to a stop somewhere in the top half of the arc and descend again(terrible on fuel I'm sure, but with ISRU you can do it easily if your ship has enough d-v to make orbit)

Nope, apparently even Kerbin orbit will be fine: