Nich

I am not sure how the games raditive heating model works but in real life 2 or 3 fins are your best bet. Once you hit 4 the fins heat starts radiating into each other which reduces their effectiveness.

The TA-18A stack seperator? As a workaround you can turn off your third stage tank then turn it on after you separate. I have had some instances of tanks supposed to be on radial decouplers were actually clipping the center tank and I would get cross feed.

Sorry I was wondering if there was any way to separate them. My MPL has over 100 experiments in it and about 70 have been processed and 30 have not. I would like to take those 70 back and hand in and leave the 30 that have not been processed yet.

Any links for the prof on 6350 as the minimum dv to LKO?

Thanks for the replies. they have been very informative

OK well now I am pissed. I reduced the base weight to 19 tons and put it on my platform that normally launches 24 tons to an initial AP of 45,000m, a center core that reaches 110,000 with 1000m/s velocity at AP and the circularizes on a poodle with 50% fuel to spare. This base only made it to 30,000m initial AP, center core managed to get to 150 but with very little horizontal velocity and the nuke was unable to circularize. The final kick in the pants, 2 of our best scientist and our best pilot hopped on a test flight that was supposed to be unmanned. The agency reports that recent attempts at a base on Miniums has depleted nearly all funds and pending failed contracts will thoroughly bankrupt them as they do not have the funds or personnel need to complete them. The spokes man for KSA officially announced their plans to file for chapter 11 and released an official appologie to the families of additional kerbinaughts who will not be able to return home. Finally he added we blamed this program failure entirely on C7 aerospace and the difficulties trying to design around the mk2 liquid fuel tanks. I plan on trying again on Normal mode with the goal on Manned base (with science labs) on both the Mun and Miniums within 100 days, No Kerbal deaths, No mods other then Kerbal alarms (this should be part of vanilla) On a more personal note I would like to thank you for your support and encouragement on this attempt at an expert play through. If you would like to follow my progress feel free to request it otherwise I will not bore you with the trivial stuff until I am caught up with my current expert career.

KSS in space on the way to Minimus. I have 2 return pods, a science lab, and lander docked for the burn. First landing on Minimus. Lander is WAY over built. It is the same lander as for the Mun. Had to intentionally tip her over to get sun exposure. Found a way to get some good science. Transmit everything back and then re-sample once for MPL and Once for return pod. Should maximize my science pretty quickly. Made a liquid tanker to resupply KSS. I just now realized it has no Mono prop supply Guess I will have a return pod transfer fuel if I cant dock it. And in new news Jeb has bankrupted the Kerbal Space program. 6 failed launches of the following Minimus base means captain of tourism needs to get busy and get us back in the black.

I have tired using them a couple times in my normal career and have found that they neither add stability or drag reduction and always reduce the energy of my first stage (by adding weight to lift off the ground). Maybe I am just not using them right. Please enlighten me

Well it was a rather boring week. On MSS they were standing outside looking for something new to land on but everything in the orbit seems to have already been researched thoroughly. KSS had reached Minimus and is preparing and scouting for suitable landing locations. Science transmitted back to Kirbin from KSS paid for badly needed Tech to resupply KSS with more liquid fuel. Initial designs appear wobbly but Bill has some ideas Rescued more DAM pilots. Why do scientist never need rescuing? The administration wanted to land KSS on Minimus after some outside sources told them they have more then enough TWR to accomplish this however the engineers were quick to point out the lander and other pods had no way of docking in a gravity environment and would run out of fuel quickly. Finally engineers began development work on the First Munar Base however with out powered wheels this proves to be an interesting task. One team lead by Jeb says just land the entire base as one piece. The other side lead by Bob wants to play around with small aircraft wheels

The reason I used Nuculear for LKO was because I wanted the station to have nukes for my station at minimus. With the 140t limit i didn't have any budget to spare for a circulation stage. Hell I sent the thing up there with only 2/3 fuel and then seent up a refueling ship to top her off before the voyage. Most of my burns to the Mun and Minimus had been 1 minute 30 secondsish. I was rather surprised when the burn to minimus was 3 minutes 13 seconds. So 4 engines is 60*4=240kn or 240 kg*m/s/s delta v was 855 m/s 855m/s / 193 s = A = 4.43 m/s/s F=MA so (240 kg *m/s/s) = F M = 240/4.43 = 54.175 kg which which means my ship only ways .054 tons? Where did I screw up? - - - Updated - - - Oh newtons are kg not g so force is 240,000 kg*m/s/s giving a final average ship mass of 54 tons bah ya an inline nuke would have been a lot nicer and I am guessing heating would have been the same just over a longer burn, still not sure if I would have been able to get it into space with the 10 tons it would have saved. Nice to know landing on minimus wont be an issue Oh and if the engine takes 1.53 kg/s * 4 * 193s then I burned 1181 kg of fuel which sounds about right but not right at the same time. That means my ship started at 54.55 and ended at 53.45. Guess all that JUNK adds up. I though I had a lot higher fuel weight percentage.

bah my immage hosting isnt working. I have 4 of the 6 docking bays occupied. With the additional attachments is 4 engines still overkill? The burn time to minimus was 3m 21s so it had quite a low TWR for what i was used to. I had to stop after 2 minutes to let the engines cool down before finishing the burn.

It is a very exciting day. With science from the Minimus fly by and the MSS we now have entered the nuclear age. May I present the crown jewel that Jeb insisted be named after him. The JSS

So the stations are nothing to be impressed with just basic functional things atm MSS on a polar orbit MS on equatorial orbit KS around Kirbin

HA HA Yes all of my probes have there battery turned off. That last 10 e is normally enough to reorient solar panels. I have another one for space planes. Use 2 rocket fuel tanks turn off oxidizer on the front one. This keeps the CG centered and the plane stable. When the engine stops firing simply enable oxidizer fuel flow.

Well after loads of research it was more likely the port was bugged.... good to know for future reference anyways.

I like the 26k orbit allows for 1 more level of time warp. Otherwise don't put your stations at 8k. The orbial mechanics come into play at very short distances because your turning so fast.

Gravity capture is very easy actually, but not with the KSP tools available to you Enter retrograde and turn counter clock wise so that your exit elipse nearly the same period as the moon. Then you both do a lap and when you come back the velocity that was added is now subtracted. Next enter Prograde and turn clock wise and exit in the same manor. The elipse will become shorter and fatter until you are captured at at time infinity. In reality 1 pass reduces a ton of delta v and a second pass doesn't save that much unless the orbit is highly eccentric like a straight Minimus approach. However sling shot off the moon straight to minimus is much faster and possiably just as efficient as a 2 pass gravity capture. In addition the method requires Extreme ACCURACY as you can easily burn off all saved delta v making course corrections.

Is there any way to get experiments out of the MPL that you have already turned to data and leave the ones not processed yet? I have 84 experiments worth about 800 science and 3/4 have already been processed. I would love to get them out. So i can turn them in (i am upgrading the 160-300 science stuff so this is a ton for me)

Funny someone said they use SRBs to get up to 100. I did it the other way using LF to get to 100 then relying on SRB to get me to the upper atmosphere then turning the LF back on. It is true though that once you hit 8 SRBs your better off with LF for additional thrust because of its density and part count.

For me the most efficient way to get to the moon has been cutting out the weight and only bringing the fuel you need or at least not returning to Kirbin with fuel. I have an orbital station over Kirbin requires a poodle, 2 rockmax 32s and 5 kickbacks to get into orbit. this has enough fuel for about 15-20 trips to the moon. Then another station at the moon with solar panels and batteries and a lander. The lander has no batteries or monoproplent, 2 mat bays 2 goo containers, 1 temp sensor and 1 pressure sensor 1 Fly by wire (a luxury) and 4 landing gear and 2 90 kg LF tanks. I use 1 kick back and 1 360 kg LF tank with a terrier and a command module. Fill up at LKO taking on 70-80 kgs of fuel. Meet up with the munar orbital station transfer 180 kg of fuel to the lander and 30ish kgs to the station (building up a supply as I only need 21 kg to return to Kirbin. I have gotten so good at docking/intercepting it only adds 30-40 dv but the cost saved on lower stages has been enormous as I used to use a poodle with the rockmax 32 costing 4500 for that stage alone. Times 15 that is 67500 vs 7500 to lift the fuel into orbit once. ALSO blasting straight out of the launch pad straight to the moon means your fight gravity the entire burn and requires a less efficient TWR engine to take advantage of the oberthe effect. Not to mention you would still need 500ish m/s delta v to capture since you have no horizontal velocity and the moon is moving at what 550 m/s?

So it has been an exciting couple of days. A resupply ship was sent to rescue Bob at a cost of 26k. Little does he know that will be coming out of his pay. I believe I discovered (for my self) you need power on both ships for docking ports to work. Bob was out of juice and I came in beautifully (maybe 20 degrees off) dead center at .2 m/s. Bobs ship went tumbling into space. Tried for 15-20 minutes to dock before I realized the docking ports were not working and it is probably due to power or lack there of. It was ok though the resupply ship had an empty command capsule. Bob just went on an EVA and left the dead ship behind. The administration finally loosened their purse strings and approved funding of the new VAB. With the removal of the 30 part limitation it is time to upgrade our Munar Lander. Added Fly By Wire (FBW), a landing light, a battery, some extra boosters and control surfaces. Bob watched the whole thing via webcam at the MSS. Being the most junior on the MSS Bob called dibs on first ride. Launch, refuel, transfer, orbital alignment and final docking went without a hitch. Jeb was super excited about FBW as the ass hat who designed the MSS only gave it 6.56 e/s and 1500 total e. Pro tip 10 e/s and orbit period /3*5 total e are bare minimums. For example my 30 minute orbit requires 3000 total e. Boy was Jeb pissed when he found out that you could not target the Sun. He went on an EVA and kicked the FBW. After cooling down he realized you can target Muh which is close enough and gives all panels exposure. Once that was sorted out Bob decided it was time to test out the new features on the lander. He lowered his orbit and made an approach on the Munar Poles (North). Must have been 100 meters away from smacking a mountain at 500+m/s, but once he passed that the retrograde hold and landing light made his first landing trivial. His only issue was the light needed to be brighter as by the time he saw it on the ground 50 m/s would have been a crash. This was a worst case of a shadow landing. Next he hopped to the Polar Crater then then back to MSS. Bob sure does like to cut it close when he docked he only had 1.16/180 kg of liquid fuel left. Science from the mission topped off the data in the MPL at 497. Looks like those boys are going to be busy for a while. Bob took the duplicate reports back to Kirbin for 205 science and his first shiny star. There was one debockle as the captain of our tourism division took off for a flyby of Minimus and left all his passengers on the launch pad. It was not a total lose has he did have some basic experiments to run and EVA reports to collect. He has been suspended without pay pending investigation as to whether any kerlcohol was involved. The NEW captain of tourism promptly left with all his passengers and sober as can be. The engineer(not bill) is now also under investigation as during ascension the pilot noticed the stages were all out of order.

Well it is a sad day. I had put the new science lab in a polar orbit. Then wanted to get Bob out there so I sent him out in a command module trasnporter. Forgot that he needed to go to a polar orbit and forgot the orbit doesn't rotate with the moon. Half way to the moon I managed to adjust his orbit to make it polar but he had about an 80 degree inclination. Attempted a very eccentric inclination adjustment at the edge of the Munar SOI but ran low on fuel and his pa had dipped into the moon. Spent the remaining fuel to get Bob in a survivable orbit. After this feasco I had one more scientist to put into orbit with the station. Waited until the moon was at the right position and inserted my self into a beautiful matching orbit. Check the inclination...... 179 degrees ......... I had inserted turning the wrong way. Luckily this was a resupply vehicle as well so I have plenty of fuel for the 120 m/s delta-v required at AP. Dock at the station with a decent amount of fuel (not as much as I had hoped) and double my science output.

Frankly weapons in KSP is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Any engines that could get armored craft to space would totally break the balance of the game Real space fighting would be with would be with energy weapons that travel at the speed of light. Thus you would be limited ground based or LKO defensive positions. Or you would have to give fusion reactors which takes all points of staging and building out of play. In addition it would be quite boring first to detect and lockon to a ship then fire wins You can already make guided missiles (probe core, tank of fuel and a terrier) but good luck hitting anything at 2000 m/s. I have a hard enough time docking at 1 m/s

So I went back for a second trip. This time was rather ambitious and brought a scientist. Landed in the Munar canyons. came in high because of the surrounding mountains. Preformed the de-orbit maneuver at 6500m. Did not realize how much fuel I had burned. Did a hop to the munar midlands. Attempted to go back to Munar station and ran out of fuel about 1km away drifting away at 2 m/s. Sent the return module to pick her up and she was quite happy. Lander preformed amazingly landing on a 30 degree incline and not a hint of tipping. Returned 545 science. it is now officially time to farm the Mun. Contracts have increased available funds to 600k plus so it is finally time to upgrade the VAB. Plans call for a new Munar orbiter with a science lab and 4 scientist to man it on a polar orbit with a better lander(with a light for landing in the dark and fly by wire avionic hub for various modes of control )