Seajay

Tim Peak (and not forgetting Tim Kopra and Yuri Malenchenko) will be coming back to earth shortly. The thing which surprised me from the ESA report is that he'll need a 4 minute de-orbit burn. By my rough reckoning it's only ~30 m/s to bring his periapsis down to 100km. Even bringing it down to zero (which clearly they're not going to do) is only ~60 m/s. 4 minutes seems like a hell of a long burn to achieve that. It implies an acceleration of 0.125 m/s2 or ~1/80g Is my reckoning wrong? do they do some other, more complicated manoeuvre to de-orbit? Or am I used to overpowered kerbal engines and a TWR of 0.013 is actually perfectly normal?

Possibly, I'd prefer it if he wasn't though because that means not all Kerbulans are bad which leaves open the possibility of redemption for any of them. Also, if he's originally Kerbal, we have to explain a double swap (one leg of which happened before the invention of spaceflight). Either way, where is alternate Wernher?

It's not hard to reinforce your rocket, 4 girders sticking radially out near the joint strutted to the tanks well above and below the joint will do it. Of course that comes with a drag penalty and I enjoy finding more subtle ways of achieving the aim. If you don't enjoy that, KJR is the answer. However, don't imagine that KJR fixes a problem with KSP. It's a decision to leave out another aspect of reality for more fun, of course we're all doing that to some extent or we'd be playing orbiter (or building rockets in a shed).

[quote name='Brainlord Mesomorph']I wonder if I could plot another lunar encounter that would slow my ship even more.[/QUOTE] Probably not, I have played with this a lot when I had a ship stuck halfway home and very low on fuel. On your first encounter your ap is higher than the mun so you're travelling faster than the mun at encounter. That means you enter the SOI prograde and leave retrograde which slows you down. Now that your orbit is inside the mun you're travelling slower at encounter i.e. It is catching up with you which means that you enter its SOI travelling kerbin retrograde relative to the mun. Using it to change your direction in that situation is only ever going to increase your (kerbin-relative) orbital velocity.

[quote name='Brainlord Mesomorph']And I am expecting someone to explain to me whythat’s better. [/QUOTE] Surely there is no need for convincing arguments. Trust in empirical data. The standard return costs 270, you've spent 136. If you can get your pe in to atmosphere for less than 134, your way is cheaper (assuming you both started from a similar orbit) .

Looking at your ship, you seem to have fuel lines for asparagus staging but your staging is onion. You should be able to get a couple of hundred more dv from that. Also fire your core engine (currently on stage 4) right from the beginning,that will give you more thrust on the ground so you can add more fuel to your upper stage while keeping your current twr.

PSA: Even well intentioned threads sometimes cause arguments. :wink: [/joke]

[quote name='Temstar']Once you match orbit with his spacecraft you can probably work out an encounter with Kerbin directly without reversing orbital direction again, bring many many layers of heat shield because you will be coming in hot.[/QUOTE] Have you ever tried this (I haven't)? I think you would be coming in at ~21k m/s (Kerbin orbital speed of ~9k + escape velocity ~3k + your orbital speed ~9k(depending on the orbit you're rescuing from)). No way are you going to aerocapture at that speed and for the sort of engines you would need for a deep space mission like this you aren't going to be able to complete your capture burn in less than a couple of hours which means no significant benefit to doing it near a planet. That means coming back the same way you went out (probably a gravity assist from Jool to give you a highly elliptical, easy reversed orbit). Out of curiosity, does the game know that this is hard and offer a correspondingly high reward or is it a similar contract value to any other Kerbol rescue?

Also worth checking that this isn't the body lift bug fixed in 1028 http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/139001-Silent-patch-for-KSP-1-0-5-published

I've been wondering what to do myself. I've been to all the planets, finishing with an anywhere-but-Eve mining ship tour. I've maxed the tech tree and have 10mil in the bank. Normally I have lots going on simultaneously (thanks kerbal alarm clock) but that's not good over an upgrade so I have pulled in all my manned missions and am waiting for something cool to come along in a new version.

From the title I thought this question was going to be "What's the best altitude for lithobraking". I know that one.

It used to be a pretty constant 100 m/s ish in the old drag model. Post 1.0 it depends on the aerodynamics of your craft. It's easy to find out empirically. Just launch straight up to 5km or so, turn off the engine and see what speed you hit the ground at.

Here's what I got when I pointed a capsule + orange tank + skipper straight up and left it at full throttle for 50 minutes (with infinite fuel hack) To get the thermal data Alt+F12 -> Physics -> Thermal -> Display thermal data in action menus.

Lots of cool science stuff here about thermal mechanics. However, I have never had a problem with this in game. Clusters of solid boosters overheat, anything moving fast through the atmosphere overheats. NERVs get warm (for me they fill up about half their temperature bar after 10 minutes but the hotter they get the faster they lose heat so they settle at an equilibrium there). Nothing out of atmosphere ever actually comes close to exploding. I'd say there is either something odd about your ships (lots of engines clipped together? Big engine attached to a small tank attached to an insulating component? ) or your install or possibly something odd about mine. What are other people's experiences?

The easiest solution is to set it running during the day, switch to another ship, warp through the night and when you come back you'll find that somehow it managed to mine all night (because power consumption stopped being modeled while the ship wasn't active) . This may not be the most realistic way to do it so depending on your play style you might not want to but it works.