Giygus

I do not believe so. I thought maybe the issue would be lack of oxygen at that height...but.. ...I guess that is it. So I just need better tech it would seem.

I have started to mess around with Career mode, and felt I needed a plane to help get some science points and complete a few survey contracts. The problem is, once this plane gets up to about 12K, it starts to slow way down, preventing the plane from climbing higher. I did skim through the tutorial here (the one with the funky hand drawn pictures and outdated drag info) but I saw nothing on this issue specifically. The wings are set up as the tutorial suggested: front ones for pitch, rear ones for rotation, and tail fin for turning. So far, my tech tree (vanilla) is only unlocked through the 45 sci. cost level, every thing else costs 90. I have yet to do any orbital science experiments, nor did I visit most Kerbal biomes, so I may be able to push to another unlock before I try for the Mun science. Thanks for any tips! Here are a couple of pictures:

OK, that may be what I am missing. Would you agree that SRBs are mainly used to increase THRUST and not DV? For example, lets say I need more DV, so I add a few fuel tanks. That lowers my TWR, so I add a few boosters to help increase thrust at the bottom of the atmosphere.

First, still learning at this, and I have been asking some questions around here, hope I am not getting annoying. So, I am trying to use MechJeb information to help build a better rocket ship, but am finding it opaque. Here are three pictures of a launch rocket with different types of stages. Tell me if my understanding of what I am reading is correct. Note that I am mostly interested in the lifting stage designs, and will be talking about "in the atmosphere" stages exclusively. Pictures behind spoilers because they are large. OK, here is a simple rocket. Weight: 80 tons, down to 48 tons when lift stage is empty. Sea Level Thrust starts at 1.75, which is good enough for leaving Kerbin. Atmosphere DV is 1423, which is less then half of what I need. If this stage were in a vacuum, the DV would have been 1548, which is only a bit better. So needing more DV, I add 3 side tanks, made to be ditched during the accent. This changes the numbers. Weight Question: Why does stage 7 have an ending mass of 106.8, but stage 6 has a start of 80.1? Do the three tanks/engines/crap weigh 26 tons, and it goes down when we decouple them? SLT: Our thrust at launch is down to 1.41, which is the low end of OK. DV: We added over 1800 DV, which is nice, but 1800 + 1400 is still not enough to go all the way up. Still needing more power to get out of the atmosphere, I add 6 med. sized SRB set to full thrust. Weight: We are up to a total of 252 tons. Weight Question: Why does ending mass of stage 8 say 175 tons and not 202 tons? Is it because we burned about 25 tons of fuel while the SRBs were also firing? SLT: We are up to 1.74 thrust from 1.41, a good number. SLT Question: SLT of Stage 7 now says 1.77 as opposed to 1.41, which it was before the SRBs. Is this because of the liquid fuel we burnt while Stage 8 was running? DV: We now have 860 in stage 8. When stage 7 starts, we now have 1201. I assume that its 1201 and not ~1800 because of fuel spent during stage 8. 860+1201= 2061, so adding the 6 SRB gave us about +200DV Overall, 2061 + 1423 = 3484, which is the bare minimum to get into orbit. Since I am not very good at this yet, I will need more. OK, that's it for pictures. Does anyone see something I am missing, or understanding incorrectly? Last question I asked , I received an answer that, after thinking about it, is confusing me more and more. The comment was: Specifically, I do not understand this: "...SRBs was going to do for you is increase thrust, which isn't going to help you. Now... if you had added fuel so the SRBs had something to lift, you would've noticed a dramatic increase in DV." I don't comprehend how you can increase thrust without increasing DV. If Dv is a measure of the total amount of acceleration your ship can output, how can increasing thrust not really increase DV? Thanks for time spent on this stuff, still trying to wrap my head around it.

OK then. I have a lot to learn about Dv it would seem. Thanks to everyone trying to give help, but I am going to have to keep practicing until I get it. I do have one last question on topic here, this picture here: Chart Does the Dv values shown have some leeway? For example, it says you need 3200 to leave Kerbol, could you ever design one that needed less? (I would assume an inefficient design would need more?)

OK, back with pictures to try and illustrate. First, the rocket I am using for these examples is a modified design from Vanamonde The other ones I had cobbled together myself were deleted awhile ago after they kept failing, but I think these will be good enough for you to see where I am going wrong. Also, today is the first day I have used RoboJeb and can see the info it is showing, bear that in mind. Alright, this one got me to the moon with a larger lander then Vanamonde had on it: http://imgur.com/gH7WFi9 and this is how it did getting to Low Orbit http://imgur.com/8GiNoee Not bad, and just about what I was hoping for. This is the same rocket with SRB on it: http://imgur.com/LyNEpWS And how far it got with the boosters: http://imgur.com/7iTelMq That is what I mean by "just a little bit better". I add four giant boosters, and I get about 1/3 of a tank of liquid fuel saved. Now this design down here was a failure no matter how I tried to modify it. Maybe you can give some tips on what I did wrong. Again, this is just Vanamonde's rocket with a little touch of newbness added by yours truly: http://imgur.com/1VOgul5 with SRB: http://imgur.com/mt1yFpV Specifically, this one was too wobbly, and suffered from that "flipping" thing when I detached the 3 liquid fuel tanks. Oddly, with the SRBs added, the main engine in line would, I think, be hit by something after detaching the 3 liquid tanks, and refuse any commands, including clicking on it. Not sure whats up with that. Album with all pictures: http://imgur.com/a/cMlhh

Wow, thanks for all the interesting tips. I didn't realize that this would be as complicated a question as it was. A mistake I seem to keep making. I'll do some tests with pictures a bit later, see if you can see anything I am missing.

First, I am still pretty new to rocket design, but I have been noticing a trend lately. Every time I try to add Solid Rocket Boosters to help out, I seem to make things worse. Or at least, only make things a little bit better. To clarify: by worse, I mean the rocket becomes a lot more complicated, more unstable, and I seem to get less far up into the atmosphere then without them. And by a "little bit better", I mean I do get farther into orbit, but at what seems a very poor trade off. Something like 6 large boosters = just a noticeable amount of liquid fuel saved, never a lot. I have only played in sandbox mode so far, but I do understand that SRB are a lot cheaper (in other modes), and are designed to be used at the start of the launch, when liquid fueled engines would be far less efficient. That being said, I still feel like there is some trick to them, or some concept I am not grasping. Any tips you're willing to share on using them?

Thanks for the guide, it worked pretty well from start to finish, and I think I even learned stuff. One suggestion I could make though, I was pretty confused on the "How to leave the Mun" part. These two lines in particular gave me a hard time. In fact, it took me more tries to clear the moon then it did to land upright. This could be a personal problem of mine, of course, but maybe a picture or two between could help. For example, I think the picture of the "moon escape" orbit should be up higher, between the two paragraphs where I quoted you. Another thing that confused me was not understanding how ship heading would change after I was out of Mun's influence. Since I did not see the orbit lines changing the way I thought they should, I kept thinking I was doing something wrong. Also, you may want to include some rough estimates of how much fuel you should have left after the major steps, as I kept getting nervous, not knowing if I was rocket'ing correctly enough to not screw myself later on. But still, it is very good, and did help a lot!

OK, so after failing at even getting my redesigned setup into orbit in my free time on Saturday, I decided to give Vanamonde's guide a shot. Worked pretty well, so kudos on a well thought out guide. I almost ran out of fuel on the return trip, but still made it back safe with a bit to spare. Will try and take what I can learn from the launch vessel and return ship and see what I can do with it. At least I am learning from my mistakes.

Snark: First, thanks for your time. 2nd, I will have to give it another try to answer your very smart questions about dV, as I can't say I know, but I am sure I am being inefficent. I can answer the simpler ones though. The 3 engines were put there to stop me from falling over when I landed. I only got to the moon once before (without exploding) in a very differently designed ship (It was pretty tall). All the RCA stuff was to either help me from tipping over, or righting me when I did tip. And there are, in fact, 4 legs. Will work more on picture taking skills. As for going to Minmus, it never occurred to me. I am kind of approaching this game a bit linearly. Orbit around Kerbin lvl 1, going to Mun lvl 2, etc. If I can't get a redesigned ship to work ill try there next. Plusck: Again, thanks for the time. It did not dawn on me about the monoprop. I wanted less then the big orange tank that goes in line on rockets, so I went with the propane looking ones. I did not realize that 6 of them = 2 Volkswagens in weight. I do have a question here: You are saying the RCS boosters (I assume you mean the ones with 4 nozzles) are very effective, and are implying that the "Vernors" are less so. In the design screen, it says the Vernors have thrust power of "12", and the quad has "1", is there something I am missing? As for orbiting the Mun, what I was doing was coming in from Kerbin, waiting till I was on the light side of the moon (without going into orbit around moon) hitting the Retrograde button, and turning on the engines until I fell straight down. Then I pointed straight up (blue side of the ball) and played with engines until my m/s was under 50 as I fell (I would have to toggle on and off). When I got close, I would turn on the 3 engines on the side so I would stay straight, then land. Not very efficient, I expect you will find. That will be very helpful yes.

OK, wow, and I thought getting off the ground would be the hard part of the game. Is this even a game any more? Thanks for any help you can give, but I am unsure of what you would like a picture of? I would assume the lander and the orbit line down to the Mun, which I guess I am plotting all wrong anyway, reading around. Light, yes, "light" I skimmed through them, will read them later when I have more time. And thank you Plusck for the info, will take a bit to digest. I will try and post a screenshot of the lander/return vessel itself at least. http://i.imgur.com/7lpm6Kc.jpg

First, forgive me for not searching forums for an already created thread. I looked at FAQ, but it seemed to be more about the forums themselves. Anyway, I built a lander that's pretty similar to the "stock heavy lander". Then I built a 2 stage launch rocket to get the lander to orbit and then to the Mun. The problem is, once I get their and start actually approaching it, I have so much speed (m/s) that I have to burn pretty much all of my fuel to slow craft down enough so I don't explode on impact. Any general idea what I am missing here? Like, am I supposed to burn retrograde at a certain altitude or something? Obviously, parachutes won't work, maybe some sort of air break? I feel like I am missing some obvious step.

I successfully splashed down after orbit with no major changes needed. Well, I needed to learn how to use the space bar correctly, but that's hardly physics fault. Thanks for all the help, I'm sure that I will be back soon with something or other bothering me.

OK, first off thanks for the helpful answers. I did NOT have time to actually play around with another launch, but I can say that the parachutes were already in their own, last stage by themselves. I suspect that I just hit the space bar 2x instead of once, starting the sequence when the icon was red, not realizing what it meant. Later today I will try again, and then post screen shots if it keeps happening.

Newb player warning, hope question isn't too stupid. I managed to build my first set-up that got out of orbit, to moon, orbit moon, back to Kerbin, and then reentry. When it hit reentry, the parachutes ripped off and the cockpit hit the ground and exploded. Reading around, I believe the issue was with staging. Something to do with the parachutes having 4 internal settings that start as soon as their set stage begins. My question is, how do I set an unused stage, below the parachute one, so they do not activate until the craft is low enough for them to work right? I was thinking maybe an unused decoupler, or maybe waiting longer to drop off the last engine/fuel tank. But I am afraid the engine may explode or something and damage the craft. Any ideas?