Tatonf

The trick is that actually only one of the two ships needs RCS for docking, the other one stay passive. And while it can seems illogical to do it, it's better to have the RCS on the mothership instead of the lander. Why ? Because adding monopropellant to your lander meen you add mass, and therefore you'll have to add more fuel/engines to get it doing what you want. This is especially true if you go only with monopropellant, since they have bad ISP. So what I do is positionning my lander as best as I can in front of the mothership and finish the work with the last one. I'm going to show you two of my scientific mirco-lander that would clearly not be feasible with monopropellant. They use the dirty external seat that nobody likes on this forum, so prepare your physiological serum. First the Mun lander. You can't see them very well but there's an ant engine and two spiders. It's designed for an Apollo-style refueling after each landing. This one is for Minmus. It's ion-powered and can get all the science of Minmus without refueling. They both have the mystery goo at the opposit side of the external seat.

Hmmm things are getting confused here. My very first problem is that I do a gravity slingshot instead of a gravity breaking because my approach is incorrect and no matter how I try I can't correct that. I'm not even on the stage of orbiting retrograde.

Yeahh

The same thing always happen, only the delta-V cost change. I think I'm gonna give up.

I'm at the mid-course correction. But that doesn't change anything. No matter how I try pushing the vectors, at the mid-course correction or in the Jool's SOI, I can't make it. The orbit goes inside Jool then comes out more or less the same it was before. For the Hohmann transfer I don't really know. I'm always getting confused at what happen when I'm changing of SOI... What do you suggest ? If it's too far from a Hohmann transfer I'm just gonna end up consumming more delta-V...

Thanks for your response. I'm as close as the atmoshpere let me be and I'm keeping my inclination as equatorial as I can. But I don't know what maneuvre I should do in order to come in the day side. No matter how I'm randomly trying pushing the vectors I always end up on the night side. If I only use Radial/Anti-radial I only get this small difference :

Could you please help me doing that ? No matter how I touch the directions on my maneuvre node I can't put the periapsis at the right position for a gravity slow-down. I know I'm supposed to get it "in front" of Jool (where it's heading relatively to the Sun) but I can't make it. I always end up having it perpendiculary to the velocity vector of Jool, which send me very far in the solar system and still in a prograde orbit.

Probably because IRL the engines can only go full thrust (or at least a good percentage of it), resulting in overshooting if you attempt to use them, while you can seriously lower the thrust in KSP. I also experimented the "too much" monopropellant as a noob, because I had no idea how the game (and rocket science in general) works, and someone was saying to always put a tank of it in a tutorial, so I was just blindly adding them to every single rockets without noticing how hungry those things were in terms of delta-V. Plus, I was only using them with the RCS button and I didn't know you could use them for propulsion purpose. But as soon as I installed mechjeb and noticed that I got rid of them.

I only use them for 2 things : - Docking, since the "Thruster Block" is the only multidirectional "engine" with it's 4 ways thrusters - Stabilization/Rotation of big rockets when reaction wheels are not enough Monopropellant is completly useless for everything else. There's always a better solution. You want a low thrust engine ? Go with the ant/spider engines. They have better ISP. You want a fine tuning for your interplanetary travel but it isn't worth adding spiders ? Right click on your main engine and lower the max thrust to 5.5. Therefore, an engine with 250 kN would go at 13.75 kN at max thrust, and should you put your thrust at 10% you would get 1.375 kN thrust, which is quite small. Actually if anyone could show me a situation when the use of a monopropellant engine ("O-10 Puff" or "Vernor") is the best option, I would be quite happy, because for the moment I just think they're useless parts.

Thats' impressive, even though the huge parables aren't stock. I did the same thing by hyperedited a vessel clamping a class E asteroid.

Ok I understand for mods. But speaking of stock, it's not "very difficult", it's impossible, which is a bit sad. Proof of the "impossible" thing : the science points you get is the same amount that there's on Kerbin, which is ridiculous considering the "difficulty" to get there.

Yeah, but Jool's atmosphere have it's use for aerobreaking and you can enter it to collect science. Sun's one doesn't allow this. But the thread seems to have gone into another discussion, too bad. Actually if you want to define "atmosphere" by "ball of gas", the Sun doesn't have one, since the matter around it is in plasma state, which is different from gas.

Thanks for the thread. Unfortunately the only person who entered the atmosphere was using a glitch in 1.0.2. The actual best sundive remains à300 000 000m, which is far from atmosphere.

Yeah. But there's a kind of big difference between the perfect Hohmann transfer and having to burn straight to Mars in a case of Sun - Earth - Mars alignment. That would probably require to go near light speed if you don't want to miss it. Meaning an almost 600 000 000 m/s delta-V requirment (including the breaking, not the return). BTW, for OP's problem, let's say that there's theorically a very precise moment where the transfer is optimal, but burning a few hours before/after will barely change anything to your delta-V cost (1 or 2 m/s probably). So don't worry that much. Something worth considering however is the inclination change. There's a lot of tutorial saying that for a good Hohmann transfer you need to look at the phase angle between the planets. But you should really consider to wait for a window that will almost cost you nothing in terms of plane change. In the worst case, which is Moho, you can get up to a 2520 m/s burn plane change (according to delta-V map) !

Well I'd love to see that thread ! I tried your technique Kweller with a super high apoapsis and a bottled ship but it still explode.

Hello, Since 1.0 the Sun (/Kerbol) have an atmosphere, starting at 600 000m ("Flying high"). There's even a flying low (juste noted "flying at the Sun") border at 18 000m. But what's the point ? You can't even get to 100 000 000m without exploding because of the heat. I even tried to hide myself behind an asteroid with tons of radiators. That didn't work. Is it just to make the game kind of "scientifically correct" while nobody could even see it without cheating ?

Plus you have now access to ISRU, meaning you can probably launch your Eve rocket as you want it on Eve from Kerbin, and refuel it there. If it have been implemented for a reason it must definitly be this.

Wow thanks, sorry I didn't see there was a sub-forum.

Hello ! Like everyone knows, the new atmospheric model introduced in 1.0 have lowered the ammount of delta-v required to put something in orbit from a body with an atmosphere. However, I can't find any new delta-v map taking this in account. In addition, all the informations given in the wiki are outdated and there's no warning about it. Does anyone care about the lack of informations about this ? It appears that there's a consesus to say that reaching Kerbin's orbit takes about 3500 m/s, but what about the other bodies ? Does anyone have made some research about this ?