Wcmille

How are reputation gains calculated, precisely? I get that it gets harder as you approach 1000. What's the formula?

I can't seem to find it in my save game. What's the string to search for? I'd like to verify this with an experiment. When I transmit science from labs, I get a point of reputation for every 50ish science, but fractions are never reported, i.e. don't get 0.1 reputation, just simply no readout, unless it's over 50.

I have chosen an endgame strategy which converts all my science to reputation. For small science gains, what is happening? Am I accruing fractional reputation, or losing everything? How can I verify this? (the reputation scale in the toolbar is pretty imprecise)

The symbols on this posts don't appear correctly for me. Am I missing a font or something?

If a spacecraft is travelling in a circular orbit around a planet with a gravitational parameter of G at radius R1, and wishes to make a 90 degree planes change to a circular orbit of R2, what is the optimal burn strategy? For example, a simple inclination burn followed by a circularization burn might be correct. If the gravity is very high, it might be correct to push the orbit far away from the planet do the plane change, and then come back. Since there are two burns, there are opportunities to spread the inclination change across both burns. How can an optimal split be made?

What's the highest reputation you've achieved before restarting? Any tricks to get it?

When have you restarted your KSP game? When will you stop your current career game? I think after I hit 90something reputation, I will restart. At 91 now. I'm at 13000 Science, probably need to convert all Science to Rep, but was hedging in case the tech tree changed from a version change.

I've just dropped my lander several times, trying different spring and damper settings. Here are some of my first conclusions: Increasing both the lander spring AND damper is foolish. You increase the stress on the leg, and you're more likely to break something. An ideal spring bears the tension between low enough that the lander won't bounce off the surface on impact, but high enough that the bottom of the lander will not strike the surface. An ideal damper is high enough to prevent the lander's underside from striking the surface, but as low as possible to reduce leg stress and prevent overdamping. If the damping is too low, the lander will feel "bouncy" (underdamped). While I believe its possible to design lander legs that could handle fast (>12 m/s) impacts, it appears the leg will fail at these speeds no matter what. For Gilly, I am going to try a spring of 0.6 and a damper of 2.0. This should help my landers from bouncing off the surface on landing. It may be that Gilly could support extremely low spring value. I am now inclined to believe that bases, in places like Mun, generally desire lower spring values in the interior portions of the base, so that the base best conforms to the terrain. It would appear that higher spring values cause some legs to lose contact with the surface, and its pretty annoying for legs to explode on the bases. I wish that Engineers could not only repair landing legs, but also change their spring and damper values in the field.

Yes, but I would like to "run" the numbers as it were. I am deliberate about my TWR and dV (I don't just "eyeball it"); I want to be the same about all the aspects of the craft.

Landing legs have a couple problems: if your Kerbals touch them, they can get flung at high speed or killed. legs explode instead of breaking. This can happen as the results of going on or off rails with the physics engine.

I believe stiffer springs/dampers on heavier payloads is wrong in KSP, because you hit the stress limit faster. Agree wth everything you say with regard to real life. I first noticed this building an Eve lander. By dropping the spring and dampers to 0.85, I was able to hit the surface at 10m/s, which was destroying my legs at the default setting.

When selecting (non-wheeled) landing gear, how are you solving this problem: Given a landing mass, gravity, and anticipated impact speed: What is the correct gear count, type, spring strength, and dampening strength? I am using experience/guesswork to make my choices now, so answers in that ballpark won't help much. Looking for the mathematics behind the parts, or experimental results someone has collected.

Are they based on real world masses?

Do you know anything about the design decisions/reasoning behind the mass of these pods?

I tried to calculate the "discounted weight" of all the pods, by accounting for their onboard battery, reaction wheels, and monopropellant. I estimate the discounted weight of the Mk1 Pod at .74125, so my feeling is that the Mk1-2 weight/crew should be a little higher than that, to account for it's higher max temp. At 2.4 it's better than the Mk1, at 2.6 its worse than the Mk III, so I think you've convinced me it should be exactly 2.5.

Quick quiz Which pod of the Mk 1-2 Pod and the Mk3 Cockpit: Weighs less? Has a higher max temp? Has a higher crew capacity? Has more electric charge? Holds more mono propellant? Has a higher crash tolerance? Has more SAS torque? Thoughts on that?

I'm only playing stock parts at the moment. I enjoy the constraint of the return window. I think I can get everything done on the time period I want, if I build the craft correctly.

A gilly base will be a first for me. My guess is that gilly has no good landing zones with large flat stretches like Mun, Minmus, or Ike. This probably greatly limits base construction, and risks bumping the base down a hill. I'm only getting 22 days at Gilly before the return window, so I struggle with losing the efficiencies of a fixed base.

There is an optimal altitude based on time out of atmosphere and rendezvous speed. Going higher reduces the orbital velocity. Going lower wastes less energy from the lander, as you say. The orbiter should have its PE at 90k, so that it is moving as slow as possible at rendezvous. Several hundred dV can be saved this way, since the orbiter must both slow down and speed up. If you do not capture the lander in orbit, you have all the limitations you describe. An ideal solution fully captures the lander. The main problem I did not solve in my solution was re-entry. A craft loaded with fuel has a high ballistics coefficient, and burns up easily.

How much ore are you carrying up on your landers?

I did not pursue this idea to completion, but my thought was to use two craft instead of one. The craft that actually lands on Eve isn't capable of returning to orbit, only sub-orbital flight. It goes to Ap, and then is "caught" by another craft. That craft then circularizes both craft. This means the craft which lands on Eve only needs 4000 or 5000 dV. This creates a fully repeatable landing system. Another way might be to use a helicopter system, if you consider that solution to be stock.

I'd be interested in seeing what others are doing regarding mining on Gilly. Pictures would be ideal if you have them.

What's re-entry and landing on Eve like? I'm loving the microship return.

So the idea of this craft is to fly to orbit, refuel, fly to Eve, land, drill to refuel, take off, land the nose section on Kerbin? Very cool.