Warzouz

You forgot "sound design"

Th You're welcome. SAS keep your rocket straight, but if you"r rocket is going sideways (such as gravity turn), the SAS will fight that and create cosinus loss (not burning prograde). Furhter more, you'll go away from the trajectory you should use. To fix that, you have to turn the rocket yourself, and as Stock SAS overcompensate, it's not very pleasant. Further more, if your rocket is structurally weak, it's induce heavy wobble. Usually I reactivate SAS to follow orbital prograde around 25km, or I activate regular SAS around 35km.

Well, I don't think this makes much difference of circularizing or not. Either way you'll always want to gain speed by burning horizontal, not vertical. By going vertical, you'll expose yourself to more gravity loss. By burning horizontal, you use gravity as a slingshot, instead of just throwing the rock. I'm not that the gain from burning straight to Duna is worth the complexity and timing of the manoeuvre. If yout trajectory isn't perfectly right, you'll have a more expensive course correction. Don't forget that direction change burns (radial, normal) are more costly when your speed is high. The best is to plan that sooner. I only do direct burn for the Mun because it's very easy to encounter. In the end, it doesn't change much on dV

Data structures and programming languages aren't the same thing. There is a very poor semantic in data structure. On the opposite programming languages have a very strong semantic. You can understand many thing even you don't know much about an algorithm or the language itself. So it's usually more difficult to create data structure from scratch than create a program to do so. I'm no even sure that Squad devs would be able to do that.

Well Go to LKO : 3400m/s Low Eeloo orbit : 3500m/s + 1000 for reasonable plane change if needed Land and orbit : 1240m/s Return to kerbin (direct reentry) : 2500m/s So you should put a 7400m/s ship to LKO.

That's much possible. I've a 2 mammoth 100T lifter which is a recoverable SSTO

Also Light your docking ports to help docking, Set them as far as you can from your solar panels. If you have the tech, add a large docking ring for extensions I recommend adding a hitch-hiker pod so you can store returning Kerbals (that may be useful as a back-up plan) You don't need the RCS, you already have a reaction wheel. When in place, space stations don't need any kind of propulsion, except if you want to move them later. So put your engine behind a docking ring and dump it when your station is in place. Bigger tank can be nice, also a bigger RCS tank for refuelling ships. You don't need the service bay. Stick everything outside your station. Stick a big stack battery under your cupola and remove the thing under it (stick the cupola directly on your station. Add a MPL ? Add an antenna, a probe core and one science experiment. That way you'll be able to do instant science contract even if your station is unmanned.

I agree. I use a lot of space stations (check my sig.) but thos space stations are to be set anywhere but LKO. Lifting heavy payload os very easy in KSP, especially if you've got a cost efficient launch system (check sig. links again). Finally, mining parts are end game. At that time, funds shouldn't be an issue any more. LKO space stations can be needed if you want to do some Von Braun exploration where interplanetary ships don't dip into Kerbin but circularize to reach a space station to be refuelled to depart again from LKO. Crew rotations are managed with SSTO space planes. This is a neat role play theme. Even though lifting fuel from Kerbin with heavy space plane might be quicker than bringing stuff from Minmus.

But good tutorials should be on the Wiki.

On the launchpad, you should use engines which ASL ISP is neared VAC values. You should avoir Terrier, Rhino, Skipper, Poodle if you can, those are better fit for pure vacuum propulsion. For that matter, the Mammoth is a very good engine (but expensive) for take-off. If you go straight up, you'll pay for gravity loss much longer. The only reason you should want to go straighter (not straight up) is if you payload is incredibly unstreamlined. THEN, you adapt your launch stage (TWR, Delta-V...). Ideally, you would want to go horizontal as soon as possible, but this would require a very high TWR (to avoid cosinus loss), but in atmosphere your would get a lot of drag loss in addition to heat explosion. Ascent is a matter of balance. In general, don't bother about your TWR after take off. Once you cross 45°, it can nearly have any (reasonable) value. A TWR > 1 is more comfortable, though. I recommend training with test payloads until you get the ascent profile you're easy with (TWR, Staging, first nudge, altitude of 45°, angle of insertion). Then decline this setup to your various payload weight. Keep your launchers designs as sub-assemblies and register them with proper payload capacity (for example : 20T launcher, 3500m/s).

Well, you can activate SAS it your rocket isn't perfectly balanced. I must say I hate unbalance. I use KER to tweak it so even without any gimbal, or torque, to rocket will go straight up. If your prograde vector is going too low, that mean your TWR is too low. You loose a more dV to gravity, and if you have to burn sideway, you loose even more fuel to consinus loss (burning away from prograde) and you stay longer in lower atmosphere so you drag loss will be higher. Use KER to check you TWR for all you stage. 1.5 VAC on the launchpad is a good value. Finally, if you have to burn away from prograde, you expose yourselft to more drag that may flip your rocket and more wobble fighting. I only go away from prograde when my rocket "slide" out of 90°, I need to correct that. But that usually happen around 25 to 30 km where drag is less of an issue. As for speed at 45°, I don't know really, As a rule of thumb, when I have to "force" my rocket so it can be at 45° around 10km, it either I didn't do a big enough initial turn or I go too fast. With a 1.4 to 1.6 TWR on launchpad, your speed should be nice so every thing depends on your initial turn. I can't giove you a precise value, it depends on your rocket structure. Don't hesitate to revert to test different ascent. Finally, if your angle is less than 10° before orbital insertion, that mean you did a very shallow ascent. That mean you've been longer it atmosphere. Test a bit straighter ascent, maybe you drag loss would be less. I think MechJeb can display gravity loss, drag loss and possibly cosinus loss during ascent. In any cases, your Delta-V to LKO should be orbital speed (2300m/s) + drag loss + gravity loss + cosinus loss. You can check my SSTO recoverable rocket launchers. It's quite well documented. But beware that was mainly designed for 1.0.4. In 1.0.5 you may loose your engines during reentry. But the ascent will go nicely. They are mostly fuelled up to 3400m/s, but that is needed to deorbit and do a power landing.

Why do we need the view screen ? only the navball is useful (and altimeter). That would solve FPS problem too

Further more, your dV depends on your TWR, because of gravity loss. My low TWR lander needed nearly 3000m/s to reach 30km. (6000m/s for the full round trip)

OK here are the chapters 1, 2 and 3 Chapter 1 : Gravity, weightlessness and ISS Chapter 2 : Orbit, acceleration and escape speed Chapter 3 : Flight plan, transfer windows, etc. Chapter 4 : About rockets (to do) Delta-V examples excel sheets (to do)

For those of you who wanted to have to see the presention, I've started to translate. Here is the introduction (PDF - 450kB) The source file will be provided when I have translated everything

I noticed the same thing in 1.0.5 with my 1.0.4 space stations. I think the MPL drains more energy in 1.0.5.

I use docking port indicator but I think it should stay a mod. The navball indicator is better to be integrated as stock. But I really wish the stock "Docking mode" had more of docking feeling. The additional UI widget doesn't seems to be useful. I really wish for a camera with reticule that displayed in this GUI. I can write text with a cellphone keypad, but I do it much easily with a 105 keyboard.

Well, we should study how users get to download a mod. Do you really need a "search/categorize" feature. Or most of us choose mods after reading forum pages or watching vids. I may not download a mod just because it's in the same category as another one. But that' my way of doing thing, it's might not be most of us way.

I suggest the Newton Cannon https://www.google.fr/search?q=newton+cannon&biw=1245&bih=289&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjeoJH4konMAhXK2ywKHWbDAHgQ_AUIBigB As for the centrifugal acceleration, I didn't used it when I explain orbital mechanics to my co-workers (nearly non of them has math or physic knowledge). I should try to translate and post my 60 pages powerpoint...

I find it's not a good idea to fragment "community assets". Managing a service like KerbalStuff or Space dock now requires a lot of time and relied on volunteers. It's alway better to have more voluntieer on a single project than multiple project with few volunteers. As a user (and not a modder) I much prefer to have a single community reliable repository as 2 even if the only one has less "user-friendly" features. In any case, SpaceDock seems well designed and does it's job perfectly. Non need to add more features. Competition is nice, but cooperation is always better.

I don't think so. MK1-2 without heat shield can come back from Kerbin SOI. I suppose it can also come back from Duna and Eve (to be tested). Further more, in some condition, you want to drop the heat shield.

From experience Lander can and heatshield will blow over 4500m/s in lower atmospheric without heating warning. When I switched to the mk1-2 pod, I could deal with 4800m/s without a sweat. I think it can do much more. But you have a point about lowering heat resistance of the MK1 lander can. It makes sense.

Sure it's still heavier, but not stupidly heavier. It has a higher heat resistance (which is not marginal when you come back from Dres and farther, a higher torque.

I think this tool is obsolete. It worked for beta 0.9 and before. The MK1-2 pod can reenter at 3100m/s without any heatshield. With a heatshield and 1/4 ablator allow 4800m/s reentry (tested). but the altitude have to be correctly chosen. It's very dangerous to dive lower than 31km on the first pass. You may blow even without and heat warning. If you go too high, you don't aerocapture and find yourself into Kerbol SOI. As said, airbrakes are useless (they were very efficient in 1.0.4 though). Drogue chutes may be needed if your vehicle is not flat enough

Did you have post a screenshot of your rocket ? What flight plan do you use ? What engines do you use ? 4000m/s is ultra strange. My "perfect" launch is 3150 m/s VAC Regular launch is 3200m/s VAC Missed launch is 3400m/s (or unstreamlined payload). I even have a experimental rocket that goes to LKO with 2850m/s VAC (but it has no payload and no real application : it has TWR = 6 on the launchpad) I usually don't use SAS before 30 or 40 km, and I rarely hit any key (only light yaw or thrust adjustment). Keep in mind that lighter rockets are harder to fly (1.25m). They usually have more drag, lesser ASL ISP engines (especially at low tech). That may explain your difficulties. EDIT : Basic flight plan (for more detailed version, see OP) Don't activate SAS, take-off, full thrust At 50 m/s yaw 5 to 10° right (gently) Never go away from prograde circle Prograde should cross 45° at 10km (I like 8km with streamlined payload) At 25km activate SAS, and switch to prograde in orbit mode Switch to map view and cut engines when AP is at 75km or 80km You should be on a shallow 10 to 25° trajectory (orbit mode) The most important part is under 5km. Recommended TWR = 1.4 to 1.6. It your TWR is too high, you'll have to force the gravity turn and loose fuel. Further more, you'll be to straight and have a high cost orbital insertion. If you have a too low TWR, You'll loose a lot of fuel fighting gravity and lower atmosphere.