egneil

Thanks for all the help. I guess I'm just trying to build my rockets too small, as they can barely break 70~75km altitude straight up. Mostly I've been trying to keep the cost of my rockets on par with the pay of the tourism contracts because they have such a static payment. (All sub-orbital flights give 13k per kerbal, and I think mun-orbital give around 22~23k per kerbal.) I'm not trying to limit my cost too much, but I would like to make a net profit from every launch.

Thanks for the advice, although I'm not sure how useful it'll be in my early career mode game. Still when I can get a stable launching platform it should help with my planning. Mainly though, I'm just trying to get my head around how much fuel I need for a static payload. Thinking about it now I think my main question is if you had a 9000dv first stage how much should you expect it to drop when you put on a 20t payload?

I've been messing around in KSP for a while now and I always have trouble designing the stages needed for atmospheric ascent off of Kerbin. I'm already familiar with the equations for finding the delta-v for a craft, but it seems to require me finishing my design before I can learn if it has enough fuel for the task at hand. So I'm wondering if there is an equation or set of equations for determining how much fuel I need for the first stage ascent of a craft for a given final stage payload. If there's any additional information that I missed that would be helpful, let me know where I can find it and I'll post it for you.