Blaarkies

Every engine on your rocket that is not active, is dead weight you are lugging around(this means the bottom stage engines needs to be a bit bigger to help carry those around). In most situations it is more beneficial to run all your engines at max thrust: -at launch, you want to minimize the amount of time that you are hovering or not-yet-in-orbit...those contribute to gravity drag. -at landing(i.e Mun) because hovering or "slowly coming to a stop" costs more fuel -burn/eject to Jool, because you only have a few minutes of burn time near Kerbin(the Oberth effect's advantages decay as you get away from a gravity well) *Note, this disregards mixed Isp engine setups(burning only your nukes might get you further than even though it takes longer...because nukes are super efficient) Activate all possible engines simultaneously. Exceptions to this is: -high isp vacuum engines(poodle, terriers, nuke) have very poor efficiency in low atmosphere, they waste lots of fuel to provide very little thrust below 10km altitude at Kerbin -when using jet engines, you want to get as much power from them before switching to rocket engines If you have to down throttle your main engine to less than 80%, your engine is too big. Remember, every ton of extra weight is less DV, and an engine running at 80% is already being 20% dead weight. Unless of course if you are role-playing a real-life space launch.

Thats completely true, the part config files show how twisted these things become in KSP. To clear it out I meant literal mass divided by volume, where volume is an eye estimation of the 1.25m tank sizes. I have an idea of using the tiny cube attachment part for this, to connect 5 engines onto one part(offset them a bit for aesthetics) and use that part as a sub assembly. This can cut down on the weight and part count for ion powered craft. Luckily Ion engines don't need much structural support strength since they are so weak. Maybe for larger ships it is fair to build multi-layer ion engine stacks(the upper clipped engines firing directly into the bottom engines). Even though that is horrible clipping, it's the closest we get to building a stock 100kN ion engine. ...but they do cost a lot of funds.

Not sure about the most dense, though it is used by a type of engine that has a very high exhaust velocity. The big xenon tank holds about 0.5t xenon fuel, thats a bad wet to dry mass ratio. The small 1.25m LFO tank holds close to the same mass within the same volume...but dv wise, the xenon wins by far. The square cube law is very very true. I did however see a "Ion launch from Laythe to orbit" challenge on the forums today...apparently ion engines can thrust while inside a fairing? Anyway besides clipping parts for aesthetic purposes, I would suggest engine mountings all over the ships surface...thus only battling the "square square law" ?

If one Ion engine can decently propel a 1t probe, then it stands to reason that 10 Ion engines can do the same for a 10t ship, right? Don't get caught up in the "ion are only for small probes" argument, it's false for all engines. Maybe for a 50t ship this becomes a part count problem, since every Ion engine needs fuels tanks, RTG/solar, batteries. At the end of the day, its all about engine TWR. But to compare TWR, you need to measure your engine mass as (engine + fuel source + electrics) vs the thrust produced. That TWR there is higher than the max acceleration you could expect after adding the payload. Want more TWR? add more of the engine+fuel+electrics packages, to essentially divide the payload burden among more engines. Doing the same comparison for nukes shows that they have a much better TWR, but still limited. You can always just add more, but you will never beat that calculated max TWR. For practicality, remember that everything other than Xenon can be mined almost everywhere, so using engines other than Ion drives means you don't carry all the return fuel with you, decreasing mass and engine requirements.

You definitely need to send a Kerbal to Eve's surface and return them safely to Kerbin in this decade...you must choose to do this and the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard! Seriously it's a great feeling, once you pull off an Eve landing and return mission, you could be talking with real astronauts one day, listening to them going to space and reply with "yeah, but have you ever landed one Eve? " But life support will definitely make it more difficult...maybe an extra living hab rover for the kerbal to wait in? just drive that up to the lander and wait till ISRU fills up the ascent vehicle

wings as in an ssto spaceplane? This seems so much easier, except for staging. A few stages makes attaining 7000m/s a piece of cake, but how do you get that in a plane? ...i have no idea how to build even a 3-stage plane

FAR can do this...but it also changes the entire aerodynamics model. If you want better units for a spaceplane, you should rather change to Mach numbers.

it sounds cool, but so does the wind-tunnel testing building. I stick to the runway. Whatever you will be landing on another world, needs to at least be able to be driven off the runway for 50m without falling apart, its a good test already The problem is that it needs to be driven off the runway before you can "launch" the next part

Ion drives are just fantasies and false promises, even when you have the patience. They excel in very specific use cases, but not much else. From Kerbin orbit to Mun/Minmus, you just need a lot of patience and pre-planning on where/when you will finally intercept the Mun's orbit. You have enough attempts for periapses kicks in this situation, it just uses more RL time. From Kerbin orbit to Duna/Eve, when you reach almost escape velocity you will only have one periapses kick left. Extremely low thrust can only get you that far in 6minutes time. Probably enough for the 100m/s extra that you need. From Kerbin orbit to Jool, you need some +1000m/s extra after escape velocity. No way Ion drives are going to get you that fast in 6minutes...so what happens is you lose out on the Oberth effect badly(the extra needed dv becomes much more than just a mere 1000m/s). Which is fine since Ion drives have a lot more dv going for them, but what is the use of it all when you have to use most of that extra dv? From interplanetary to Moho, Ions are great. Moho doesn't offer a lot of Oberth anyway, so you can just start slowing down like halfway into it's SOI(and solar panels are super charged there). This is completely different from Eve again, where you have heaps of dv and one chance to capture into orbit(cautious aero capture might be better) All in all, if the mission requires mostly deepspace burns,moons/eelloo intercepts and the like, then Ions are advantageous. If the mission needs launching, landing, quick captures, then nukes are a pretty good compromise.

All solar panels work on Eve's surface even at sea level(rover that brought down my kerbal had 1x6 panels still attached to the fairing section, the rover itself used the big flat solar panels and my Eve lander filled up tanks use gigantors and ISRU) The solar panel do however provide less power because of the dense atmosphere, they provide about the same amount as you get in Kerbin orbit from them...but in Eve orbit you get a lot more power from them Be careful with asperagus like that, you get lots of cross-section without much mass. By the time the outer tanks are dropped, you are already in thin atmosphere where a small cross-section doesn't influence aerodynamics much anymore

Gilly yes. Im mad at how much more science gilly has vs eve. There are a lot more binomes on eve, but it isnt nearly as easy to traverse Eve(getting explodium ocean science takes a specialized rover) A Kerbal could work as "science container", not too sure about mass differences. plus, a kerbal with a Eve flag badge puts the first Mun landing heroes to shame

For the first time, you need to iterate this process a bit. Build a rocket that can barely get your payload(probecore and command seat?) to orbit from Kerbin. Call it K1 Next, build a launcher that can bring K1 up to kerbin orbit as payload(without using any fuel from K1) Call this K2 K2 pieces needs to have around 2.5 TWR(kerbin), because Eve has surface gravity of 1.7g's Build K3, the re-entry and ground staged section. 10m heatshield, parachutes on decouplers, extendable ladders on decouplers, landing legs on decouplers, parachutes on de.....yes, everything that is not part of K2 gets decoupled on Eve before the Eve accent begins My lander was 5-stage, 40t, 2.5m stacks from top to bottom(probecore,seat,tiny fuel tank and engine was inside a 2.5m fairing. Ladder outside close enough to the seat allows boarding). On the decouplers were drills,ISRU, radiators, solar panels to fill up the tanks on surface. And a 10m heatshield. Tips: -My empty lander was like 14t. That re-enters much easier than a fully fueled ship(landing on less parachutes) -Drills like to overheat during re-entry if they are not sealed and locked into cargo bays. Even if they are tucked safely behind the heatshield like everything else. To fix this, add a fairing around them. (for me, it was from top to bottom: lander, drill-fairing, 10m-heatshield...kind of like russian dolls) -To stop flipping during re-entry, leave some(300LF+O) fuel in the bottom most tank -Don't go to 3.75m parts unless you need to(the biggest cross section part in the rocket generally determines to total wind resistance) -Don't worry about have only 1.25m part at the top for aerodynamics...at the stage where they become the biggest cross-section parts of the rocket, you are already in thin atmosphere where it doesn't even matter anymore(thin parts mean lots of length, make for a tipping lander) -Eve atmosphere at sea-level is 5bar(5 times that of kerbin sea-level). >Engine ISP and thrust suffer a lot from that(Vector engines give 1000kN thrust, but at Eve sea-level they produce about 550kN) >Aerospike is good as second stage(good twr and isp), and still efficient even though you need a 2.5m reaction wheel to help it point up. >Terminal velocity is a bit different. 1.7 times Kerbin gravity means you should accent faster(to lose less due to gravity drag), but 5 times atmosphere means you need to go slower(lose less to air friction). My launch needed 250m/s at start; 300m/s at 10km; 600m/s at 20km and then floor it. + For testing purposes: Alt+F12, infinite propelent, then set orbit to Eve. Use engines to cancel orbital velocity, so that you fall straight down(slow down to 1200m/s at 50km using engines, then leave it to free fall, pointy side towards space). Keep an eye on your speed vs altitude while falling. This is your terminal velocity(almost, but you can go slightly faster because you will fight the wind with a aerodynamic pointy end) -For luanch, set Navball to "Surface" mode. Select the "Radial out" SAS mode. When in surface mode, this points towards "Up"...yes, the simple up, meaning where the sky/clouds are. Don't aim more than 5 degrees away from the prograde marker(air resistance on Eve is major) -I started my gravity turn at about 5km. Set SAS to manual, and gently nudge 3 degrees towards the east. Keep that heading/pitch untill the prograde marker fall to the 85 degrees mark, then engage "Prograde" SAS mode. Just focus on having terminal velocity, and see where it ends up(to shallow, then start the turn later *this need to be done when testing) -Staging vs Dry-mass: Every stage is extra dv, but 10-stage rockets lose out a lot due to carrying around dead engines...but one massive fuel tank also has a lot of dry-mass to carry around. I follow the double fuel rules:> 0.6t capsule. add some empty fuel tank and engine to it. total mass, 2t. Now, if I fill up the fuel tank, the mass should be 4t. Follow this for any stage, and you get a good amount of dv vs the amount of mass you added

Nukes have more than double the efficiency of any LFO engine out there. Just create space tugs with them(like the tug boat that pull ships into harbors), leave the nukes in space then only send half as much fuel to orbit each time. No need to worry about attaching engines to your ship for the interplanetary journey, the nuke tugs are already in orbit. Due to new aerodynamics, Asparagus isn't half as good as it used to be. A large sized stack rocket with payload sections is much less hassle and almost as efficient. Add a single RTG to your ship, but then just add more batteries. Better on money an weight. Very true, especially randomly place Junior Docking ports(you never know when you need to upgrade the comm dish of a space station, or forgot a contract-critical part for a departing ship). The Claw is all purpose docking, it works everywhere on everything and is lighter than docking port(IIRC)...but it does feel cheaty. bon-voyage-0111-make-your-wheels-rolling, mod that make rovers do the roving themselves(while you do other launches and stuff). Don't bother with rovers if the drive is more than 50km, the gains are not worth the amount of time it take holding down the forward key(unless using this mod)

You mean like this?: If you set the slider down(0.50 occlusion), then it is equivalent to having only "half-a-kerbin" block your comms. Imagine a sphere inside Kerbin, with only 0.5 times the diameter of Kerbin...comms can draw lines however they like, as long as they do not intersects that sphere. Turning it up to 1.00 results in Kerbin's sea-level being the comm-blocking sphere...as long the two dishes are at least above the sea-level horizon, there can be connection. Now, setting it higher to 1.10 should result in comms being inactive while being below an altitude of 60km(since anything in the lower atmosphere/landed will be within the sphere). *Speculation, as i have never tested this last case

Quite a necro you did there, don't you think? But i like the idea, sounds really cool. ...it should actually be doable as a mod even

No how could you say that?! What will force you to start a new career then, if not for the new updates the get released the moment your Laythe colony ship departs from Kerbin?

Its up to your imagination

I am not sure about data, but they can definitely connect your craft directly to the KSC. A small probe with only a relay dish does connect with KSC without any hops, so I believe that transmission would work as well...but i have not tested that, so i wont argue about it yet

If thats due to the rocket itself: Try having all stages 1 or 2 times as heavy as what is on top of them... Start with a Mk1-2 capsule(3crew capsule). Thats 4tons. Add the batteries, solar panels, science experiments, heatshield(empty the ablator to 80), parachutes. That should be 5tons now. Now add at least 5tons of fuel and engine(the 4.5t quarter rockomax tank sounds nice) with a Terrier. That should be 10t now. So add a 9t rockomax tank and a Poodle(...or 3 Terriers). That should be 20t now. ...add 18ton tank, enough engine to push that, and so forth(just continue the doubling of mass ratio for the launcher, the boosters, etc.) Each of these stages have +1500m/s dv but made with low level parts. If you can get that into orbit, you have a fighting chance to get to Duna orbit and back again! Dont expect to launch a duna landing mission from the lvl2 launchpad, 140ton wont go that far with low tech parts...but with docking for refueling, it could be done

I see what you did there...

Minmus alone can unlock 2/3 of the techtree...Kerbin+Mun+Minus unlocks the entire techtree, with 1000+ science to spare. Much of this science is from Gravioli experiments over each binome, at low and at high altitude. Use the R&D list to see which binomes still need to be explored...and go to them? This is practice at Minmus, it is grinding on Mun, it is exciting on Duna...it's a nightmare on Eve. For those who want the entire techtree, but don't want to go interplanetary...there's enough science on Kerbin for the jet parts? It's not like we humans invented the ion drive by going LEO...it's obliviously because of Voyager 1

Mars SMA is 227.9Gm (meter notation should always be lowercase) Sorry, it just seemed wildly inconsistent, to the point where I was thought you were doing it almost on purpose. That was mostly due to latency ping vs roundtrip-time. Thanks for the in-depth info here I apologize if the "misinformation" comment was offensive

12% Legends tells of some miners finding ore concentrations of up to 15%

Drop a probe onto the mountains West of KSC. Equip this probe with about 3 HG-5's. Send a probe with a similar configuration on an eccentric polar orbit, Pe at south pole, Ap as high as you can get it without losing comm. The dish right after the HG-5 will be enough for an Ap of 84Mm(edge of SOI). Make sure the Pe is 70km. I have not experienced any blackout in the northern hemisphere. The polar orbit sat swings by Pe so fast(relative to the Minmus-month time it spends in the above the North pole) that I just have not had the bad luck of launching in that time yet. Even the darkside of the Mun gets a good connection when in orbit. With default occlusion settings, this should even cover half the southern hemisphere aswell

That was a typo, right?