Ripper2900

Also doable in-flight. Not only during construction.

You'd be going slower horizontally at the altitude where you do your deorbit burn, yes. But when you hit the surface, you will have picked up that speed vertically again.

Right-click it, and choose "Close"

How about having them use some parts from the space-k craft they've found, to "mod" the Avalon? Then you could keep continuity with at least *some* redesigning. I love your story!

I believe that the original way of doing motor efficiency in Ksp was to have engines working at constant thrust, but vary the fuel consumption accordingly to the current Isp. That algorithm is probably what remains with those thrusters?

Remember that each subassembly must have an attachable root node for it to work. If you make an upper stage or lander, try to select the bottom item as the root.

This thread answers a lot of my unknowns, one thing though: does the overlay in fact improve (visually) after a surface- or narrow-band scan.

The survey scan pretty much says only *where* there's ore, and where there's more ore then other places. Exactly how much, you can't tell. The percentages are only relative, although I'm not really sure what they are relative to... The actual ore concentrations can't be determined without a narrow band scan.

The overlays all mean the same, they're just different visuals. The "heat" represent different concentrations of ore but I'm not sure relative to what. Also note the setting the cutoff to eg. 60% doesn't show actual concentrations of 60%, but 60%of the max. (not sure what max is), and it's really inaccurate. Ore is located by biome, and with large variations within biomes. You really need to use the narrowband scanner and the surface scanner to get good results. Or just plain luck. One rule of thumb that seems to hold from my experience is that sloping ground generally have more ore then nearby flat ground.

Yes they are wheels. They can roll. But they're not powered by a motor.

Another tip I found useful the first times I was docking (before I knew about the Docking Port Alignment Indicator) is to use the locked view mode. Press "'v" repeatedly untill it says "locked". This will change the view to be relative to your own craft. It will make it much easier to do translations and rotations. It can get pretty confusing to keep track of what is up and down while you maneuver around your target. With locked view, it's a breeze.

Buy won't those non-optimal transfer-dv to eve also cause non-optimal captured? Meaning that you'll spend more both to get there, and to stay there?

The size would depend on the fuel. Producing a stoichiometric amount of hydrogen / oxygen by electrolysis seems to be the closest analog to the isru in ksp. The ratio of products to ore (water ice?) would be very close to 1, and require only electricy, and a cell which could be almost arbitrarily small. The rest of the refinery would be cryogenic cooling equipment and such... You don't need oil to produce rocket fuel.

Retro-solar orbit... Ouch! But there is a way to see the contract orbits before you accept. The tracking station will show the orbits of contract objects, even before you've accepted. It just doesn't say which contract, the orbits relates to, so you have to guess, although it's usually not hard to see that that solar orbit belongs to the "sattelite in a solar orbit" mission.

The engineer needs to be in the ship. Any pod or even a command-seat will do.

Lol, that big one reminds me of the Caspian Sea Monster. http://www.australianhovercraft.com/images/gef_caspian_monster.jpg

...But only if there's enough ore. There is a break even point of ore concentration where the drilling and converting can keep up with the consumption of the fuel cells. The OP wrote that he's not picked the best spot for drilling, and there might not be enough.

That's no problem. As soon as the ships are docked, they're seen as one single ship. And rcs functions as such.

Another trick is to do fuel transfers on the way up. Once the top tank start to have some empty space, put sas on attitude or prograde hold, then alt-click on the two orange tanks and fill the top tank from the bottom one. That shifts center of gravity forwards, and keeps your rocket more stable.

I'll recommend a dv of 2000-2200 if you're going to do something useful on Duna. The ascent will cost around 1500, but you need to deorbit as well, and a bit if maneuvering, plane changes and such will also cost a bit. Put airbrakes for the initial entry, and plenty of chutes for the descent. Also don't count on chutes alone for the actual landing, you'll probably need a *very* short burn to slow you those last few m/s before touchdown. Just a 2-5 second burn should do, but it will also take a little from your dv budget. And: better safe than sorry. I've just rebuilt my lander to have ~2500 dv. That allows for a short hop or two to make a couple of science measurements before I have to return to the mothership in orbit and refuel. Good luck.

In ReaLife a single large engine *should* be better than several smaller ones. Usually, though, it's not so, because it's difficult and expensive to build very large engines. So the benefits of making the ultimate engine is very often outweighed by the savings of using less perfect, but cheaper hardware. The ksp engines are mostly grouped with one "launch-class" and one "vacuum-class" engine in each diameter size. Then there's see specialized versions in each class. The better TW of some of the larger engines doesn't mean that one is always better, because it's the TW of the ENTIRE rocket that's the important factor.

Well. Neither the Soviet Union nor the US sent much stuff more capable than a stayputnik before launching their first kosmo-/astronauts... Perhaps the first capsule should be in the second tier, instead of the first, but rovers and such is much more advanced imho.

Just a guess, but as others has mentioned, perhaps that claw is seen as the "mothership", with additional living quarters attached. But as the class craft doesn't have antenna etc., it won't complete. Did you dock the two craft from the station's point of view or from the claw's point of view? Perhaps that has a saying. If you undock, does the building criteria then go green, or are you still in the grey? If so, you could undock everything, then dock to the claw while controlling the station, then dock everything to the asteroid. Or dock to the station while controlling the claw, then dock to the asteroid. Good luck

Well only if those scientists are philosophers who can sit in their living quarters and come up with new results. Otherwise they'll need a workstation to generate science, and the lab has only two of those.

I've seen that too. A science Jr. inside a 2.5 service bay. As soon as the rocket was loaded at the launch pad, all he'll broke loose! Sparks flying, rattling noises and BOOOM. I believe that the culprit is the fact that the bay has 4 nodes. 2 on the ends outside and 2 inside. Somehow we must have attached our science Jr. to the outer node, and it clipped inside the bay. Part clipping is something those bays really don't like! A second rocket with the same way of putting a science jr. inside a bay worked nicely. Anyone know if there's a way of determining which of the inside / outside nodes are used?