Tatonf

About a year ago I designed a challenge that got no one interested in where I calculated the Isp of the decouplers. However it's a bit hard to read because it was made on the ancient forum, now the editing is destroyed. I'll repost it here : TT-38K Radial Decoupler : 11.4 Hydraulic Detachment Manifold : 2.9 TT-70 Radial Decoupler : 6.5 Structural Pylon : 2.3 TR-2V Stack Decoupler : 1.1 R-2C Stack Separato : 0.8 TR-18A Stack Decoupler : 6.3 TR-18D Stack Separator : 4.6 Rockomax Brand Decoupler : 1.6 TR-XL Stack Separator : 3.6 TR-38-D Stack Separator : 0.5 So yeah the TT-38K Radial Decoupler will probably give you the best delta-V. Check out my challenge by the way !

Yes, I use KER, , but it doesn't show the nodes. It IS close to the equator : Yes you're right, I forgot about that, I'm gonna do that. EDIT : Well, the combination of retrograde plus normal or anti-normal doesn't work. My orbit stay inclined whatever I do. I don't know what to do.

Hello there ! I'm having a bit of a problem here : I have a ship in a very eccentric orbit around Eve (Pe near the atmosphere, Ap near the bound of the SoI), but it's inclined by 13° relatively to Eve. I would like to make it equatorial, and I know that changing incilnation is cheaper if you're going slow rather than going fast. I didn't know where to correct the inclination, so I tried to replicate this situation around Kerbin (so I can get my nodes while targeting Mun), and the nodes happened to be very close to the planet, meaning I'm going fast, meaning the inclination change is quite expensive... So I don't understand why people say I should do it while I go slow if I don't have the choice of where I can do it... I tried to correct the inclination while being halfway between my Pe and my Ap, and I could barely bring it to 11° before it starts going up again... What should I do ?

Yes, I have the same problem.

For your TWR, anything above 1 can work, but starting with 2.5 is a minimum for something comfortable. As for Delta-V, the theoretical minimum is 4540 m/s (for landing then going to LTO), but I wouldn't pack less than 5000 m/s if I were you. I'll just add that, the higher your TWR is, the less delta-V you need, for two reasons : 1) During descent, you'll kill your horizontal speed faster, reducing the time during you gain vertical speed due to gravity 2) During ascent, you'll reach your orbital speed faster, reducing gravity losses.

I don't know if it's a bug or a feature, but in the VAB you can toggle the minimum pressure deployment down to 0.02 atm for drogue chutes and 0.04 atm for regular chutes (this is how they are toggled by default). However, if you launch your rocket and then right click on them, you can toggle both of them down to 0.01 atm, which actually makes a difference between landing and crashing on high altitude on Duna (and maybe Kerbin, but mountains are quite rare on it). So my suggestion would be : Make it possible to toggle the minimum pressure deployment down to 0.01 atm in the VAB / SPH. Thank you.

Thank you my plane is now working. Well, except for the piloting part of course. If I turn a little bit too hard my plane is destroyed, I'm loosing control easily, and loosing speed when landing takes forever. I can barely "flare", so I rely on drogue chutes, AIRBRAKES and brakes, and still I think it's too slow. Geez, I really hate planes. I also tested it on Eve and, well, the atmosphere is too punishing, it doesn't go very far.

Hello ! I've been playing KSP for 3 years but I never used planes until now. Mainly because I don't understand how they work. But now I would like to collect science from multiple biomes on Eve and I'm afraid that using a rocket hopper will be too difficult, mainly because the precision is poor. So I'm trying to build a plane with ISRU on it, but I can't make it work. Here's the poor monster : The main problem is that despite the elevon it won't quit the ground, it just roll at 150 m/s before exploding. This on Kerbin and Eve. So questions are : How do I make it work ? What do you think of it overall ?

I think Laythe is fine where it is... But if you really want it closer to Jool, just use Hyperedit.

No need to say, I approuve this topic. Callisto is beautiful, and there should be a moon like this one, just for the pleasure of the eyes.

Yes but starting from a 71x71 km orbit you go up to 33 223 000m while I only go up to 771 262m, meaning you had way more delta-V than I had (or way more buggued Oberth effect - which I doubt).

I tried to replicate your experiment but I can't get the same results as you. My spacecraft is composed of 3 parts : the HECS probe, the oscar fuel tank and the swivel engine. I used Hyperedit to put it in the following circular orbit (and to refuel it between each experiment) : 71 km : Ap raised to 771 262m 95 km : Ap raised to 841 500m 101 km : Ap raised to 859 380m 103.7 km : Ap raised to 867 420m But I don't think this experimental protocol will lead us anywhere, in order to check the influence of the Oberth effect we should use non-circular orbit, with a fixed apoapsis and a variable periapsis. So, I replaced the swivel engine by the vector engine (so I could get a shorter burn time), and I used a constant 5 000 km apoapsis so I can have a great change despite my small dV (this is what we call a "big response") : 71 km : Speed at Pe is 3066.0 m/s ; Ap raised to 32 787 857m 85 km : Speed at Pe is 3031.1 m/s ; Ap raised to 31 556 426m 99 km : Speed at Pe is 2997.2 m/s ; Ap raised to 30 443 993m 101 km : Speed at Pe is 2992.5 m/s ; Ap raised to 30 299 403m 110 km : Speed at Pe is 2971.3 m/s ; Ap raised to 29 648 300m As we expect, the faster I go, the more my apoapsis is raised. According to my results, the Oberth effect is functioning totally fine. Or maybe the use of Hyperedit fixed it ?

HOLY SMOKES WHAAAAAAAAT ? I've been playing KSP for 3 years, always putting my spacecraft at the absolute minimum altitude (~71 km, 1 km margin in case of), and you're telling me it's not the most efficient way to do things ? I refuse that.

Usually people come back to the thread where they post a replie to see other's people reaction. At least it's what I do.

You can still Edit your original post.

In early career, I just send the bare minimum for completing the first contracts. If I need science, I go to Minmus, or other celestial bodies (you can get an enormous amount of science with Surface samples or the Science Jr.) However around the end of career I like to gather all the available science, so I send a ionic hoper to, Mun, Minmus, Gilly, Ike, Bop and Pol. Here's my Mun hoper : It does have a low TWR (1.7) so you need to know the constant-altitude landing technique, but it's super light (6 tons) and it have a lot of dV (10 000 m/s), so I only need to refuel it once. I leave my station in an equatorial orbit, and while I do my hops I keep an equatorial biome in stock so it is the last one I do before going back up to the station.

Heatshield is not necessary for this kind of reentry.

Let's be original here : Mechjeb / Hyperedit / Precise node Getting something to calculate your delta-V is mendatory for me, and hyperedit just save me tons of hours so I don't have to send each new design to it's destination. Precise node is a bit of a luxuary, but is appreciated to it's right value.

Let's add that he's using the unrealistic 2kN ion engine. Plus, he shoud not be able to power them with solar panels while in orbit around Saturn. So you should be pretty happy with this ion engine still. I think there's a mod allowing you to use them while time warping.

Yes but this is a mission to Gilly.

While saving dV, you're going to have a much more massive spacecraft with the inflatable heatshield than just adding a tiny bit of fuel. Because of that, each of your stages are going to be bigger to support the extra weigh. Don't look only at the delta-V, look also at being mass-efficient. The lighter your payload is, the smaller your rocket will be, and the easier to build. I don't know if an aerocapture is possible without a heatshield, I know that the upper atmosphere of Eve have been tweaked a bit to be more forgiving, but Eve remain a dangerous celestial body. Planning a Gilly encounter from LKO is probably the most difficult thing you can do, due to the SOI of Gilly being super small. Plus, it's going to be very inneficient, because the Oberth effect of Gilly is almost non-existent, while the Oberth effect of Eve is huge. I think that the most efficient way to encounter Gilly would be : - Make a Hohmann transfer from LKO to Eve with a Pe of 100 km. Your initial orbit should be slightly inclined to account the inclination of Eve / Gilly. Your inclination while you arrive in Eve's SOI should be the same as the one of Gilly. - Do a retro burn, so your Ap is equal to Gilly's Ap. This is a tricky part, because of the transfer window, it might not be the case. The only solution I see is waiting for a transfer window that will give you this configuration. Fortunately, there's a lot of Kerbin - Eve transfer window. If you are quite close, I think a small radial burn might be acceptable. - At apoapsis, raise your periapsis a bit, so in a certain amount of orbit, all you have to do is raising your periapsis again to Gilly's periapsis and you'll encounter it. Gilly's SOI is so small that you can consider going to it like making a rendez-vous.

But the inflatable heatshield is probably going to weigh more than the fuel required for a 80 m/s burn. Plus, it's difficult to control the final orbit after the aerocapture. Plus, you have to do a burn at apoapsis for raising your periapsis.

You don't know how to use alexmoon ? The instructions are pretty simple still. 1.Select the celestial body you will be departing from. Kerbin 2. Enter the altitude of your parking orbit around that body. This is assumed to be a circular, equatorial orbit. Check your orbit, enter a mean value if it's not circular. 3. Select the celestial body you wish to travel to. Eeloo 4. Enter the altitude of the orbit you wish to establish around your destination body. You may check the "No insertion burn" checkbox instead if you intend to perform a fly-by or aerobraking maneuver. 10 km is usually a sweet spot for bodies without atmosphere. In the case of Eeloo you can go down to 4 km. 5. Enter the earliest departure date to include in the plot. Generally this should be your current game time, which you can find in the tracking station in the game. As it is written, enter the game time found in the tracking station. 6. Click the "Plot it!" button. After a few seconds a plot will appear showing how much Δv is required to reach your destination for different departure dates and times of flight. Click on any point on this plot to see full details of the selected transfer. Here you go !

I wanted to report this since a long time, but each time the loading screen ended and I was like "Oh well I have better stuff to do, and so have the dev team.". Still, I'm also happy they fix it, thanks for the answers.

For a long time there have been a mistake on the loading screen, where the green planet was going faster than the blue one. But now it looks like it have been fixed. When did it happened ?