March Unto Torment

Hey, everyone! So, I'm in the midst of planning a Jool-5 mission, for a craft which I'm currently assembling in KEO (it was originally a space station, hence the odd location for assembly). However, for... reasons, my total burn time on the transfer stage - that is, just the stage I'm using to get there from KEO, which has almost exactly enough dV to get to Jool from KEO (4,131m/s) - is sort of ridiculous. That is, it's one hour, fifty minutes and twenty-nine seconds. Due to the nature of the mission (it'll all become apparent when I actually do the report), increasing TWR or decreasing craft mass are not available options. Now, as I see it, my only real advantage is that I'm starting from KEO, which means that such a burn could (if done all at once) be completed in only 1/3 of an orbit, as opposed to taking ten thousand or so orbits if I was in LKO. Any suggestions for where to go from here? Is splitting it up into multiple burns a viable option? If so, how many burns should I use? Many thanks to anyone who can help out! Best regards to all, - March Unto Torment EDIT: Question has been answered! Thanks to the long-suffering efforts of Plusck, I now have a direct answer to my question (along with an absolutely gargantuan amount of auxiliary information on how to get to Jool). For any future Kerbonauts wanting to know specifically how to execute long burns without wanting to wade through my ramblings, bear witness to Plusck's genius:

Some experimentation has given my vehicle new life! Changing out the capsule for a drone core and the small ISRU has given it massive effectiveness. It's now able to mine ore, convert some of that ore to fuel, mine more ore, carry full tanks into orbit and then still have enough fuel to land again; effectively reducing my 'profit ratio' to zero. (As for why I want to hang onto my ore instead of fuel, a dedicated ISRU lander/tanker hybrid would be absolutely gigantic, and I lack the patience and the landing skills to maintain a surface mining outpost.) My only consideration is whether I want to re-engineer a little to change the small ISRU for a large one, which would save me massive amounts of time (since it has a 1:1 conversion ratio, not a 10:1 ratio). That may, however, result in the lander spiralling out of control in terms of sheer size. To answer the questions about Pol or Bop, it's twofold; firstly, the inclination change is massive and costs a lot of dV for the amount of ore I can haul, and secondly, I like my space station to be rather centrally-placed in the system, instead of lying at the outskirts.

So the going suggestion is to use a compact ISRU to refuel my lander on the ground, then lift the rest of the ore into orbit for refining?

So, I recently experimented with a Vall mining lander, in preparation for an upcoming Jool-system space station. Research informed me that at least 2,500m/s of dV was necessary to land and then ascend to orbit. This seemed like far too great a number (and rendered efficient mining impossible), so I hyperedited my lander into a 10,000x10,000 orbit and commenced landing operations. Landing took, near-as-makes-no-difference, 1,000m/s of dV. Proper suicide burning could probably get that down to 850 or so, although I've yet to locate the suicide burn calculator on MechJeb. After (yet again - in my defence, this was a test run and I didn't feel like waiting months for the drill to work) hyperediting in a full 3,000 units of ore, I commenced the ascent, convinced that my lander - now stuck with only 1,016 m/s of dV - wouldn't make orbit. However, despite hugely inefficient burning and accidentally winding up on a 30-degree orbital tilt (I need more TWR on my lander), I still managed to ascend much higher than thought - into a roughly 40,000x29,000 orbit (like I said, it was a pretty crude burn). Magic! So, it seems that Vall is significantly more practical for mining operations than previous. If you plant your refinery in low orbit (say, 30,000x30,000) you won't have too many woes bringing ore back at a profit. Additionally, whether due to more precise measurement or simply due to changes in how the game calculates things since the 1.0 release (although the latter seems unlikely to me), the net dV requirement for Vall landing/ascent is only 1,850m/s or so, much lower than previous indications. The trip used a total of 4,800 units of fuel; I suspect that a bit more practice could shave off 300 units of fuel, give or take. The return offers 6,000 units of fuel, thereby giving an approximate net gain of 1,500 units of LFO per trip. While not outrageously practical - you'll need to mine a lot of fuel to get anything back to Kerbin - this does prove the viability of Jool-system mining landers, which I've seen a lot of people dismiss as impossible or impractical. So, does anyone have a more practical way of mining fuel within the Jool system? I considered a Pol or Bop-based lander, but both of took so much dV to reach and get back from that you'd never successfully provide enough fuel for system exploration. And what's the most ore you can 'bring back' in a single trip?

Ah, thank you for the advice. To address - Thanks for the note on the intakes! That'll save me some weight, I reckon. Another precious few tonnes of cargo and/or dV to take to orbit once I get rid of them. Not quite enough thrust for a rocket SSTO, because... The engines I use (both from mods - scramjets and 2.5m RAPIER variants) have terrible thrust at low speeds. Just getting the damn thing up to 400m/s can be quite the hassle. However, after that point, I get a huge spike in thrust and all is well. The reason why I cut throttle is because - as mentioned above - if I don't, I gain too much speed at too low an altitude and the thing explodes due to overheating. Hence my whole problem here. Ah, thank you for the velocity advice. I'll up thrust a little during the 15km-20km phase, then, to get myself to over 1km/s. Although I'm concerned that this may induce overheating. Duly noted on the subject of the correct altitude for airbreathing engines. I find myself starting to lose thrust about then anyway. Regarding 'absurd orbital velocity', I say that because I'm travelling at close to 2,000m/s orbital while still at around 25km altitude. This puts my Ap at 55km, hence why such a short burn to put my Ap up to 100km, and another short burn (only 185m/s) to circularise. Come to think of it, if I held altitude at 20km, the thing would probably accelerate itself to a 20x20km orbit (although air resistance would cause such an orbit to rapidly decay).

Hey everyone, So, I'm trying to get my new SSTO to orbit (well, I say 'new' - it's basically a rebuild of the old Valkyrie SSTO), but I'm running into some issues in the ascent stage. Basically, the thing has oodles of thrust. That much, I know. It's capable of hitting over 2,000m/s while still in atmosphere. However, this leads to a big problem - heating. I never encountered this before 1.0.5, but all of a sudden, I need incredibly precise throttle control and can only really open the taps above 22,000m, at which point I'm starting to run out of air anyway (something which is mitigated, but not eliminated, by my absurd number of intakes). If I fail - and my first ascent involved many, many fails - then the thing completely disintegrates due to overheating. My ascent profile looks something like - Accelerate to 400m/s at sea level at full throttle. Pitch up and slowly claw my way towards more speed, start cutting throttle at around 7,000m as it begins to accelerate. Hit 20,000km doing about 750m/s (the thing refuses to stop accelerating, even while pitched up at 15 degrees). Desperately try to figure out where the 'balance point' of heat vs. intake air is. When feasible, floor it until I gain an absurd amount of orbital velocity. Wait until engine thrust drops too low, then make a roughly thirty-second burn for orbit on closed cycle. Am I doing something wrong? I feel as though my overheating problems are excessive. Anyone know a fix? Best regards, - March Unto Torment

It's worth experimenting with forward-swept wings. I've reached outright absurd levels of manoeuvrability using those.

It's because there are no longer 'physicsless' parts - instead, it adds the physics properties of that part in realtime to the part it's attached to. So attaching multiple of them in sequence, and then to a 'physics'd' part is resulting in a whole bunch of extra calculations applied to that part every second.

As far as I can see, people here are mostly salty about the lack of an extra Gas Planet. Now, to my understanding, one of the major reasons why extra planets weren't implemented is because they can be very memory-heavy. Therefore, we're more likely to see them following 1.1, I suspect. Either way, it seems pretty redundant to me. The majority of the fanbase likely never make it out of Kerbin's SOI, and certainly not beyond Jool. Now that we've got realistic heat dynamics and aerobraking is pretty much impossible (hint - there's a reason why aerobraking is very rarely performed in real life), you'd need a ludicrous amount of dV to get anywhere worthwhile anyway.

Running test flights on experimental aircraft with Valentina, after I finally got around to saving the Original Four.

Define 'low Jool orbit'.

Christ, what the hell are you using hypersonic atmospheric probes for?

Kraken off the port bow!

That's the plan, at least later on; it's pretty fuel-efficient in atmosphere, so I'll probably only pack ~1,000 units of fuel for re-entry, allowing for about 120t to orbit. Unfortunately, it turns out that there's not much which weighs that much which actually fits inside her cargo bay I'm planning on soon lifting a full-sized Jool-capable ship in two SSTO launches, though, and even then, the only reason for breaking it up is because the standard ship is too long for the cargo bay.

Holy ...., this thing isn't segmented?

Ah, thank you. That's going to be very useful.

This is genius. How'd you do it?

Holy ...., that's impressive. I thought mine was big at 1,000 tonnes... No solution, though. I'd advise just taking your time; it's all you can really do. My advice for future use is to load Kerbals up in advance.

Hey, everyone! Out of curiosity, how do you all write the Original Four? I've been going over that myself since I wrote Fire-Forged. I'm reasonably happy with how I've written Jeb, a little less so with Val. What's everyone's thoughts?

Ah, that's what the pitch indicator is for! I always wondered what the use of that was. Anyhow, thanks for the advice, everyone! I'll try a test flight this evening. I've added airbrakes and SPH testing indicates that I should be able to shift my CoM significantly forward. With luck, I'll release my design after further testing - I'm very happy with her performance. When I landed her, even after my dramatic tailspin, I had close to a hundred tonnes of fuel left in the tanks. I'm pretty sure that, once I've worked out exactly how much fuel I need to use up to get to orbit and adjusted accordingly (so that I land empty), I'll get at least 120 tonnes to orbit in a single run Oh, and regarding the aerodynamic forces, this is a very solidly constructed spaceplane. Plus, I use KJR.

BD Armory also has some parts with night vision capability (FLIR pods, for instance), although your FOV is kinda limited with those.

There is an astonishing lack of sexism in this thread. Good job, KSP community Anyhow, it sounds to me that while isolated cases of Kerbelle Space Program could occur, the sort of endemic instancing we're seeing here makes it seem statistically improbable. Especially the aforementioned 70:0 number.

Ah, sorry for the confusion. I was wondering how flying it would work if I put my CoM really far forward; I was having some issues early-on with the Valkyrie with my CoM being way forward of my CoL (moving the fuel tanks back fixed that one right up).

Ah, thank you for the advice. Working on the modifications now. One question, though - what do I do once I'm in low atmosphere, and want to resume normal flight again?

Quick picture of the design I'm using - As you can see, it's a very much delta-wing, streamlined design. But I'll try adding some airbrakes towards the rear, to focus my centre of drag, and pump the fuel forward (although that may necessitate structural modifications, since most of my fuel tanks are towards the rear).