bewing

... aaaand those calculations are exactly why you don't use the engines to generate the speed. You have to use as many gravity slingshots as you can muster. Voyager is not zooming out of our system at super-high speeds because of an amazing set of engines.

By "legitimate", I assume you mean not driving a ship through the crack in Kerbin's crust to the center, either? With just orbital mechanics, I think the "best" way to do it would be to use Jool for a gravity slingshot straight down Kerbol's throat. Approach Jool retrograde at the highest speed you can manage, make a very low pass -- carefully nullifying your Kerbol orbital velocity. Then do as KerikBalm is doing -- fall to 300,000 km or so, and burn all the ions you've got. I suspect you could get to around 150 km/s, but the Jool encounter would take some time to set up.

It doesn't look like you really want to do atmospheric stuff (jet planes). But if you change your mind about that, then aerodynamics. Along a similar line, the atmospheric analysis device gets you lots of science points (but only if you fly it around a lot). If you only want to do rocketry, then the HECS is really vital. Even if you want to use pilots on a lot of your missions, you still will need probe cores for some. OKTOs are just not capable enough. Once you really understand how to use it, retrograde hold is a wonderful thing. After you have RCS going nicely, the next vital step is docking -- and then you will want the Klaw. It is much better than docking ports, and fills the same function.

Yeah, having them sitting there screaming their heads off (and scaring each other) annoys me, too. Your company paid big kerbucks to put you on this flight, Mr. VIP. The least you could do would be to try to enjoy it. Sheesh.

I go for the smaller-is-fine-for-me approach. My first stage booster here (3 kickbacks) gets almost anything of mine most of the way into orbit, or most of the way to Mun or Minmus (for refueling and further travels). The first stage is meant for a pure-vertical launch and is 100% recoverable. The second stage is just a plain thumper.

So, I don't build SSTOs. For guidelines for atmospheric only planes, I'd say: Canard-based planes are significantly more efficient than standard tail-dragger types, which is why Burt Rutan always uses canards. So if you care about efficiency at all, then don't build planes that look like the ones you see out your window. The canards in the game are too small, so tailfins make much better canards. At high altitudes, even two tailfins are not enough canard to maintain good stability, so use four in a shallow X. Planes that are meant to land on bad terrain should have at least 5 wheels -- the standard tricycle setup plus two more outriggers near the center of the plane (unless you pick good landing sites). Learn how to use a Panther. Once you get to 8km altitude then level out and light the afterburner. If you want fuel efficiency then always fly as high as you possibly can, as fast as you possibly can. Don't bother with MK2 parts unless you are specifically going for looks, or you are building a seaplane. MK1 parts are better in almost every way. Type B swept wings are very nice. 800 LF can get you a quarter of the way around Kerbin and back. 1200 can get you halfway around and back. Retractable landing gear definitely reduces drag, has much better brakes, has landing lights (quite important at night), and allows your plane to "kneel" -- which makes embarcation/debarcation much easier. Non-retractable nose gear steers much better! All steerable landing gear uses an immense amount of electricity, so add a few more batteries! An MK1 command pod makes a very nice airplane nose -- plenty of reaction wheel, very low drag, good electric storage, and a free ladder for doing "EVA report while flying over biome X" experiments.

Well, I think we need a bit more info. Are we talking SSTO planes? Or are we talking just basic atmospheric stuff? Because if it's just atmospheric, you don't need any heat dissipation, even at mach 3. And the basic MK1 parts have plenty of heat tolerance. The constraints of atmospheric design are more: is it easy to fly (stable at all altitudes)? Easy to land? Does it look nice? Is it for long range? How much time are you willing to take to get to your destination? Can you drive it over terrain safely? Do you want parachutes with that? How many seats? Does it come in black?

Law of the Internet #1: no thread stays on-topic forever. It's all about a question of removing historical cruft in favor of a more rational design. Base ten is historical cruft -- cultural inertia. But metric enthusiasts try to have it both ways. You want a more rational system of units, fine. Just realize that half the system is still rooted in historical cruft. And if all bases were the same, then computers would calculate in base ten.

Seems to me that the game philosophically requires building on prior successes. So you have to start with a base or two in the Kerbin system then work outward. For the first base I prefer the Mun over Minmus. Better Oberth, mostly. (But it doesn't really matter how much fuel it takes to move fuel around, once you have an infinite supply.) For xenon, of course, the only source is Kerbin, so Minmus makes the better base for ion propulsion. Once you have the Kerbin system base, exploring all the inner planets doesn't take too long (in a relative sense). Which leaves a base around Jool as the next logical step. So far, I like Pol for that.

For every centimeter, there's 10 millimeters. Why 10? 10 is a completely stupid number. "Because most humans have 10 fingers." So what? There's nothing special about base 10. Base 12 is better (if you look at it rationally). Base 16 is better still. People need to get out of their human-centric worldviews.

You are incorrect. I're proven it with testing.

A slightly different answer from the above ones is: Mun and Kerbin are in the same orbital plane. So the only thing you need for timing the launch is to wait until KSC is pointed in the correct direction with respect to Mun. You want KSC pointing about 45 degrees ahead of the Mun for a nice efficient launch and capture. Yes, you can launch straight up until the tracking station says you will have a Mun encounter. You save about 25% on your fuel by launching straight up, so if you are on the edge of having enough fuel, a straight vertical launch can certainly help. If you don't have enough fuel to get back, then that is what the drill and converters are for. Or you can launch a tug/tanker first into orbit around Mun, and dock with it.

As a physicist, I can tell you that SI units and the metric system are almost as silly as Imperial units. You still have just as big a mountain of silly constants and conversion factors to work through in just about every equation. It's not worth getting all religious about.

Actually, in the video he dropped the fairings at 48km. Total savings on his ship (which was built to be a somewhat extreme example) was a measly 3% from using 2.5m fairings. *yawn*

Actually, they can wiggle forever. If you watch a ship all alone in high orbit with SAS turned off, it'll wiggle around quite a bit. I think it has to do with how each part is considered as a separate object when calculating the physics.

But one hell of an impressive way to steer your ship!

I always launch straight shots. You save 25% on your fuel that way. Going into LKO first is a waste of time (and fuel). You only need to wait until KSC is about 30 degrees ahead of Minmus, anywhere on Minmus' orbit. Turn on SAS Stability mode and launch dead straight up. Get your Ap to about 45 Mm. Rotate and zoom until you are looking back toward Kerbin from Minmus' orbital plane. You will clearly see whether the tip of your orbit is above or below the plane. Make a small burn (a few seconds) either north or south until the tip is exactly in line with the plane. Then set Minmus as your target. It'll show you the position of Minmus at closest approach. You need it to be below 2 Mm for an encounter. Generally, you almost always need to carefully burn a little more prograde to get an encounter. Then you need 200 m/s of deltaV to get a capture once you are there. PS. One further note: tourist flyby missions only count if your ship was in orbit around Kerbin before your Minmus encounter. So when you are just about to get to your encounter, you may want to do a 60 or 70 m/s burn east, to establish an orbit. Minmus will capture you anyway, a few seconds later.

It must have been uncomfortable for him to have stuck it there, too.

No, the lower parts explode, which tends to shoot the upper parts back in to the sky -- where they proceed to fall and crash again. The second impact will usually destroy what you were trying to save.

I was doing somewhat similar testing recently -- to test out the real capabilities of the micro landing gear. I wanted to know what that "150 m/s impact tolerance" really meant. I stuck 3 of them on a 1.5 ton craft on the launchpad. Launched it up to 250m, 300m, 350m, etc. and let it fall back to the launchpad unpowered. I especially wanted to know what happened with "locked" vs. "unlocked" suspension. With unlocked suspensions, I was surviving impacts of 100m/s undamaged. With a locked suspension, the legs started falling off and then exploding when it landed at a little over 30 m/s. But otherwise, the rest of the craft survived.

Funny, I always just looked at IVAs as being decorative. I enjoyed looking around to see all the bins for trash, rubbish, junk, snacks, food, not food, and biohazards all mixed together. Trying to read the shopping lists on the post-it notes, to see what kerbals eat. I never even considered trying to fly a mission from an IVA. I use probe cores instead of pilots, anyway. But now I'm definitely going to have to try an IVA flight or 10. @Raptor9: "Elon Kerman"?? LOL!

Is this upper stage a first? I dunno. It'll gently deorbit 9 space-stranded parts for less than 4000 kash each. It would be even less if I used a terrier instead of a nuke. (But the nuke makes it work well as a space tug while you are collecting the 9 parts to deorbit.) How about the climbable ice cliff near the north pole, that allows you to take "ice cap" samples while splashed? Is that a discovery? I dunno. How about the other ice cliff (where you can get "tundra splashed" samples) that you can run up? How about the fact that a pure-vertical launch to Mun or Minmus saves you 25% on upper-stage fuel compared to a traditional launch? Is that a discovery? I dunno.

I only know about two klaw bugs remaining. Klaw jitter, which destroys about 1 ship in 50. And planet deletion, which AFAIK is 100% repeatable; but you can always avoid with careful focus control.

Well, there's still the waterboarding kraken and the klaw kraken that I have to avoid most days. And 1.1 is only a few days away. So really, we're going to have to do all our kraken searches all over again very soon.

I start over when I learn something that I consider important about the game, that tells me that I was doing inefficient and foolish things from the beginning. Some examples: * When I learned that MK1 parts are significantly better than MK2 parts for spaceplanes, or any other use. * When I finally learned how to use a Panther. * When I first learned how to use an MPL. * When I figured out the correct way to use an MPL (for my style of gameplay). * When I found out that rover wheels have no traction, and are either useless or very difficult to use. * When I figured out that I don't need RCS in any form to do docking maneuvers or anything else -- I can do it all with just the main engine.