Nich

Does ignore max temp allow you to plant a flag on Jool? or do you sill explode and -100m?

You can also raise and lower a pair of legs and docking ports will connect if they are close enough.

Another great entry

Actually my rocket SSTOs circularize as low as they can without burning up about 35km My Plane SSTOs have a shielded docking port on the nose hit 1600 m/s on air at 23km and circularize at 31-32km

Yes splitting build points makes the prestige points very difficult. I suspect the scoring is bugged because the cost of getting the MPL in orbit is much more then the kerbals but the kerbals give a lot more points if they land on Ike and Duna. +6 for prestige +2 for orbit +6 2 on Duna +6 for 2 on Ike. The 2 labs only give 4 total and weight 5 times more. Although you don't have to land and take off the dv requirement is not that large for Duna (30% of the mission) and practically free for Ike (<5%) Same goes for Kerbal habs very heavy very expensive very few points. I hate to say it but I think Bill odyssey 518 kerbal SSTO is probably the way to go. That being said I am enjoying the challenge of completing all the points but I simply have way too many funds tied up in hardware that can not be recovered to get a decent score.

75 was a hard limit for me more cubics would not help. Reducing mass would not help. Cubics and landing gear were getting up to 100 but the extra mass of landing gear barely make it worth the risk effort

hhhmmmm.... not sure if cheating or if I am just jealous I didn't think of it

I think it is 3.8:1 ratio which is so bad it barely out performs the poodle with the same tank. I stick with packs of aircraft tanks. 3-4 tanks per nuke is decent TWR and 4-5 km dv for interplanetary but I don't mind PE kicking so generally go heaver.

Eve mission is on the way. Just wanted to thank everyone for all the help.

Just wanted to thank everyone for the help My eve mission is underway

Thanks for all the help I have launched my Eve mission if you want to check it out.

This will be my first time ever doing Eve. I got a contract to explore Gilly and the Eve window was up So i figured might as well conquer the purple beast while I am there. Up first I have my obligatory Gilly base for a contract. That and Explore Gilly paid for the mission. Up Next is my new Interplanetary Crew transporter. With 4 years of supplies and almost 8000 dv. I hope she will see plenty of action. No more stinking command pods for years. Up next is my pride and joy Da Bizness is a rocket plane with science and drilling equipment to refuel the assent vehicle. This will be the deciding factor of the mission. With 3800 dv in LKO I am unsure if it will be able to enter Eve without burning up. After transfer and capture there should be almost 1000 dv left for deorbit. Any aerobraking should make me much more comfortable as I would have liked 1500 dv for reentry. And Finally the Crown Jewel. My lander with a little over 8100 dv and 1.37 initial TWR. As long as I can get this refueled before food runs out should be fine. For logistics I decided to send a bunch of fuel/supplies with heat shields along with the mission in hopes of spending less time refueling and more time SCIENCING. Mission is projected for 1 window but I should have supplies for 2 if I want to extend it. I will post another pic later after I have completed Air braking.

Yes I have never liked the fact that KCT punishes small builds. It does kind of make up for it by giving double points for second and third VAB

I did do some experiments with cubics and struts but I ran into the problem of not being able to brake all 4 struts at the same time without destroying the craft. If you don't destroy all 4 struts it will force a tip over.

Ha ha that is awesome. I am doing my eve transfer now then fast forward until Jeb and bill are back on kerbin. Good decision taking off with a rappier it is the only way they would probably get one as the are always recovered in the program

the old debate of turn fighter vs energy fighter

You reaction wheel might be fighting your control surfaces too I made a version of your craft and it flew just fine but I cant land it as if you power down the wheelsely battery dies too quickly Are you flying with SAS on? If you get too far off prograde it will flip quickly

Sadly I have never figured this out and use KER. I don't think I can do this in my head. really it is just math

Fighters are generally unstable and require computer control to fly. At this point you could switch to a faster acting canard and fly with SAS on. Big S parts have more deflection and faster actuator speed. Change the front nose cone to a precooler with an aerospike and put your control surfaces on that to give a larger lever arm.

Put a maneuver node at Tylos PE and it should show the exit. Your going to want to turn the other way. They way you are going now would increase velocity. You are going to add tylo velocity and you want to subtract it and change your angle

For my senior design project I did a crumple zone lander for a mars rover and found that it is actually about 1/2 the weight of LFO for the corresponding dv. Of course there are complications involved including g-forces, uneven ground, and final orientation. I decided to do some testing. I created a lander put some fuel on it and engines so I could hit the ground faster. With no landing gear the craft had 846 dv 4 Micro landing gear the craft had 817 dv had a top speed of about 45 m/s. This was a savings of 16dv. 11 dv if we put in a 5 m/s safety cushion. If you account for the fuel not wasted burning against gravity during touchdown it will be significantly higher. What was really surprising where the cubic octagonal struts. 4 sets of 4 only reduced the dv to 838 but also allowed the craft to hit up to 70 m/s. This was a saving of 62 dv or 57 including a safety cushion. Additional gains from not fighting gravity would be even larger. With a TWR of 2, 140 dv has to be expended to get 70 dv when going vertical and this assumes a perfect suicide burn. As TWR goes up this becomes less and less important but with lower TWR lighter craft are possible for the same dv.

From what I have seen if you want to get into the 3250s for dv to orbit you have to circularize around 45-55km and do a hohmann transfer up to you target altitude. At 45km your lossing a lot to drag and at 55km you losing a lot of oberith. 35km and even 25 km is fine too for efficiency because oberth helps so much but I have a lot of trouble with exploding at 2500 m/s. The whole range seems pretty break even for me. unless I am launching something extra draggy then I go for 55-65km.

you would probably want to add in constraints for min TWR engine thrust 0/ (p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1+em0+9et0 + decoupler1 + decoupler2 )*9.81 = 1.7 engine thrust 1/ (p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1 + decoupler2 )*9.81= .8 engine thrust 2/ (p+em2+9et2) 9.81= .3

In college a professor showed us a way to maximize dv for a payload using ratios but I can for the life of me find it on the internet or derive it my self. Given a Payload of P then the dv for a 3 stage rocket would be dv0 = 9.8*ISP0 * log(m0/m1) dv1 = 9.8*ISP1*log(m1.1/m2) dv2 = 9.8*ISP2*log(m2.1/m3) Unlike in KSP mass of a real decoupler would be dependent on the mass of the payload (or next stage) and Final TWR of the previous stage thus m1 = m1.1 + decoupler mass m2 = m2.1 + decoupler mass Thus dv0 = 9.8*ISP0 * log((m0+ decoupler1+ decoupler2)/(m1.1 + decoupler1+ decoupler2)) dv1 = 9.8*ISP1*log((m1.1+ decoupler2)/(m2.1 + decoupler2)) dv2 = 9.8*ISP2*log(m2.1/m3) Given the fact that all tanks in KSP have the same fuel/mass ratio of 9:1 we know ft/et = 9/1 or ft = 9et m3 = payload + engine mass + empty tanks or p + em2 +et2 m2.1 = payload + engine mass + full tanks or p + em2 + ft2 m2.1/m3 = (p+em2+9et2)/(p+em2+et2) m1.1/m2.1 = (p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1)/(p+em2+9et2+em1+et1) m0/m1.1 = (p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1+em0+9et0)/(p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1+em0+et0) Thus Total dv = 9.8*ISP0 * log((p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1+em0+9et0+ decoupler1+ decoupler2)/((p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1+em0+et0+ decoupler2 + decoupler1)) + 9.8*ISP1*log((p+em2+9et2+em1+9et1+ decoupler2)/((p+em2+9et2+em1+et1) + decoupler2)) + 9.8*ISP2*log((p+em2+9et2)/(p+em2+et2)) ISP0, 1, 2 are known p is known em0, 1, 2 are known decoupler 1, and 2 are known The only variables are e0, e1, and e2 so if we differentiate these and find the position that slope = 0 will have a max or min. The problem is it has been 10 years since I took calc 3 and I have forgotten how to differentiate a 3 variable problem. Also this will give us the absolute maximum dv possible how would we constrain the problem to give us the min weight with a specified min dv? Would you simply add et0+et1+et2 = some arbitrary number?

The small converter sucks I think it is 4 times less efficient then the big converter. If this is a factory just put the big converter on it.