Nich

Launch tanks full of ore and refine to mono, recover, profit

NNOOO the 5 part limit is really challenging for people to work together. I really hope this challenge continues for 1.1

Someone was looking for a Minimus SSTO but I cant find the post anymore. Here is mine from my career game. It has enough dv to land on minimus but not the Mun. It could use bigS wings, a shielded docking port, and a little AOI which I have yet to unlock. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0iPRE-stt2CSXRzY1YwSVN5NWM/view?usp=sharing

number 4 would never work, you would burn through your sidewall very quickly or keep your pressure/temp very low/inefficient. Fuel is needed to provide isolation to structural parts.

My faring closed just fine. try removing the landing gear first

How far is joul? 8 minutes at light speed? I don't know if we have the measurements for that kind of accuracy

Are the langing gear or docking ports getting in the way of closing? I know you can close a fairing on a fuel tank, ore tanks or isrus don't work

You can use the 2.5 m faring and connect it to the tank

Actually you are right I can get less thrust longer using thrust limiting and I can get more thrust shorter by using half full kickbacks. I guess using half full SRBs makes me sad. Guess I just need to install spacey parts to get bigger SRBs.

Actually your right slingshot off the mun saves a good chunk of DV getting to minimus and capturing as you are less esentric.

Wait for rapiers and a 40% payload fraction otherwise they are more hassle then they are worth. I like a SRB (junked) LFO (recoverable) 1.5 or 2 stage rocket

Career pad weight limits on hard pretty much require an all LFO for first mun flyby, orbit until you unlock the terror. Otherwise you should be using SRBs off the pad combined with minimal vectored LFO for control

So has @Nefrums pretty much proven that nose cones and decouplers should be kept to a minimum? I have not been able to get his rockets to orbit so I can't really tweak it to try to improve

Impressive mun landing with a low TWR. Looks like you followed all the rules to me

Nope you nailed it perfectly only thing I would add is they burn evenly out of each fuel segment. Although the this is not the exact answer as heat and flowrate at the bottom causes more to burn on the bottom. Please feel free to correct me but I believe the effect is called erosion

Hhhmmm..... You could use air breathing so it drains tanks evenly but if you can't restrict fuel flow to the stack then it would require an honer system to not do cheaty designs

I know it would take a lot of rework but why don't we separate SRB motors from there fuel like LFO. This way you can build your own SRBs as you would like. If this mod already exists please let me know as I feel it is not worth the devs time to add to stock if it has already been done in a mod

Learn something new every day I always went back to ksa to do named saves

For a challenge 100 DV can be the difference between 1st and 5th place. Although I have to agree minimus first is cheaper based off my gut feeling. You have to account for the entire trip and burning to minimus first takes more advantage of oberith saving more DV then the transfer back cost from the mun. I also have no idea what cost more transfer from mun to minimus or minimus to mun. It may also depend on the mission landing vs orbit vs flyby. Without building each mission and totaling all the burns I just can't say.

Yes I had a lot of troubles getting the first minimus contracts to spawn. In fact explore Duna came up and minimus never did.

Docking should be in IVA that is pretty much the only challenging thing. Do action groups work in IVA mode?

And save it as a sub assembly this is exactly something I have been contemplating.

Oh and the exact answer is 56.7% for a serially staged rocket however this assumes you can perfectly scale your lifter engine, vacuum engine, fuel tanks and decouplers. It was been a while since I have seen the proof but it might also assume the same starting TWR for 1st and second stage as well the same ISP for each stage. @GoSlash27 I don't think your mass example is quite correct. If we want to save mass we wouldn't be using SRBs anyways. Also by that logic we would never want to light the SRBs because the LFO lifter stage always has a better ISP then the SRB. I did some checking and the terrior does not overtake the swivel until 12.3 km. So by your logic you would not want to light the terrior until its ISP is greater then the swivels. In addition we would want to shut off the swivels. However this would detrimentally affect TWR. I was more of hoping for some math that shows how TWR is related to dv to LKO. Unforunitly I do not have excel on my laptop as I am on vacation however I do know off hand that for me TWR of 1 requires 4.6ish km dv to get to orbit, 1.7 requires 3.2ish km dv, and 10ish requires 2.6ish km dv. I suspect (have no math to support) that if you wanted to do a numerical approximation of the relationship of TWR to dv required to LKO you would want to subtract 1 twr. However this may only be applicable to the first 10-20km. In fact the value of TWR to dv to LKO is probably different every 5 km. I am going to have to think about it but I dont think it is as simple as mass wasted. Maybe it falls more to mass used vs dv gained (after subtracting gravity losses). So assuming 5 engines, 1 terrior, 2 swivels, 2 thuds. We then need to look at the ratio of actual dv gained vs mass used. Then we need to look at the ratio of terrior on vs terrior off. When this ratio is greater then 1 it means having the terrior on gets us more dv. I think this could be set up rather easily numerically in a spread sheet (GGAAHAHAHAHHHH I want my computer) for a pure vertical launch however when a gravity turn thrown and aero drag gets thrown in it become extremely complicated.

@goslash27 However this does not account for the fact SRB fuel is cheaper then LFO ( i think) or the fact the your first 1 TWR is paid to the kerbal gravity gods. Worst case serino your rocket has 1 TWR. if you light your deep space engine with terrible isp you are now accelerating. On the opposite side if you have 5 TWR your deep space engine has no impact and is just waisting fuel. What is the break even isp TWR. This gets really complicated when you look at a rhino with a decient atm ISP. Your wasting fuel at 255 now that could be used at 340 later but your getting free acceleration as your lifter has already made the sacrifice to the gravity gods.

Math!!!! Or link