mk1980

i don't think i would enjoy the game much if it was too realistic. i view it as a good mix of "gamey" elements with a somewhat realistic background. i suppose something like life support could be added without making it too tedious, but then the devs would also have to add a lot better planning tools for interplanetary travel etc. you can't just tack on an arbitrary life support system without also giving the user the tools to plan transfers (ie. transfer windows, deltaV calculations etc.). that would be a very bad decision from a game design point of view - you punish the player for doing something wrong without giving adequate tools to do it right. regarding the general level of simplification (simplified fuel types, simple electricity system, powerful reaction wheels, simple docking, simple crew/fuel transfer etc.) - i think the balance is pretty good. i don't see how 20 different types of fuel would make the game better as a game. it would be more realistic, but it would not improve the gameplay at all. they shouldn't add needless complexity just for the sake of realism. it's still a game, after all. it should be at least somewhat accessible for new players. the learning curve is already very steep compared to... pretty much every other video game i played in the last 30 years.

the size isn't really important. the important thing is that mk2 tanks are only very slightly heavier than the 1.25m tanks and you get a massive amount of heat resistance and decent crash tolerance for that tiny bit of extra mass. they are not automatically the better choice, but they do have their uses. for example on space planes that don't dump the fual tanks but actually bring them back down for recovery. not really sure about the body lift. i remember that it was quite possible to actually land mk2 craft with no wings or parachutes - just with the body lift they provided. haven't tried that stunt in v1.1.2, though. it's quite possible that the body lift is currently bugged.

if heat is a major problem, you could just replace the mk2 cockpit with an mk2 inline cockpit (or passenger cabin) and put an mk2 adapter tank in front with a shock cone intake or a shielded docking port as the nose. the docking port has insane heat resistance. i never managed to burn one off even at really insane speeds (like 1200m/s at 10 km or 1600 m/s at 22km) and it's useful for docking the craft once in orbit. the shock cone has better aerodynamics but worse heat resistance (still A LOT better than the cockpit), and it would provide enough air for your 2 rapiers, so you could replace the precoolers with something else.

getting there. been messing around a bit. basic design is an mk3 plane with 8 rapiers. got it to 300x200 orbit when the fuel ran out. had ~1000 oxidizer left over. with better fuel balance, it might get to the 300x300 orbit. will need a bit more fuel for the retro burn, though. it's trickier than i expected. that plane could probably get the tanks to a 75x75 km orbit and return without any changes. maybe i'll have to reconfigure. add some more LF and maybe some extra engines. a pair of nukes would be nice for the orbital maneuvers i guess. i'm done for today, but will continue tomorrow if time permits

the usual SSTO jet engines (rapier/whiplash) have pretty low static thrust and really good thrust at high speeds. the sound barrier is the hardest part of the ascent because you have low thrust (due to low speed) and high drag (the sound barrier). if you can make it through it, your plane can also reach hypersonic speeds with no issues. thrust at supersonic speeds gets A LOT higher before it starts to fall off at high hypersonic speeds, so it usually takes less time to go from mach 1.2 -1.3 to mach 4+ then it takes to accelerate from takeoff to mach ~1.2-1.3.

I think i'll make an entry to that challenge when I have some time to spare. One question though: "4. The craft must have functional RCS to allow for docking and a usable docking port" I usually dock my spaceships without RCS, and I don't really see why a cargo lifter plane that delivers tanks to orbit should even need to dock at all. I mean, if you intend to dock the craft, it's pointless to put the tanks in a cargo bay - that only adds the mass of the cargo bay on top of the mass of the tank. makes more sense to transfer the fuel from the internal tanks of the craft and not use cargo bays at all. not going to start an argument here, though. a few MP tanks and RCS thrusters won't make or break the design anyway

it's possible that the mod that shows the launch window is just wrong. I'm using Kerbal Alarm Clock and it displayed wrong launch windows occasionally. funny enough, that was also a return trip from duna and the launch window was also... inverted? or something. basically, it showed a window where kerbin is at the opposite side of the orbit. i ended up doing the return trip the old fashioned way (by "eyeballing" the correct phase angle of ~ -75°). also, 1650 m/s seems excessive? i'm pretty sure my transfer burn back to kerbin was somewhere around 670 m/s

here's a link to a website that calculates some important numbers for efficient transfers: http://ksp.olex.biz/ it also explains the process a bit. basically, it boils down to the following: - for an optimal (or near optimal) transfer, you have to launch during a "launch window" - the source and target planet should be in the correct constellation, otherwise an optimal transfer is not possible. - that constellation can be described by a "phase angle". if you view the solar system from "top down" and draw a line from the starting planet (in your case- kerbin) through the sun, and another line from the target planet (Eve) through the sun, the phase angle is the angle between the 2 planets. the calculator suggests a phase angle of -54°. if you imagine the solar system as a clock, that means the constellation is about right when kerbin is at "3 o'clock" and eve is near "5 o'clock". - the "ejection angle" from the calculator tells you where on the low kerbin orbit you should place your maneuver node. for a transfer to one of the inner planets, that ejection angle is always on the "day" side of the planet, for transfers outwards its on the "night" side. in my experience, that angle is not necessarily the correct angle for each situation. i suppose it would be if everything is perfectly aligned, but in practise you'll often have to drag the node a bit upwards or downwards to get an intercept. - the goal of the planned transfer is that both your ship and the target planet will arrive at the same point at the same time. the numbers are calculated in a way that this intercept point is more or less exactly on the oppsosite side of the sun from kerbins position at the time of the burn. - note that it's pretty difficult to set up such a burn with the default maneuver node interface. the main problem here is that you basically have to zoom in to kerbin to drag the node along the orbit, but at the same time you kinda have to zoom out to see the effect of that node (ie. to see if the burn will result in an intercept). takes quite a bit of practice to do it. to my knowledge, there are various mods that make the process easier. I'm probably not the right person to make suggestions since i always did my transfers with the stock tools, but i'm sure others can give you some good suggestions how to make it a bit less frustrating if all of that sounds to difficult, an alternative solution is to bring more deltaV than suggested by the maps. those maps assume near perfect efficiency for most maneuvers, so if you want to just get there somehow, it may be a good idea to bring more fuel than the bare minimum. nuclear engines are pretty efficient. it's not hard to design a nuclear powered probe/ship that has 4-5 km/s deltaV. if you can get that thing to kerbin orbit, you can easily reach eve or duna even with farily inefficient burns.

You dont burn to solar orbit first. The delta v maps assume that youre doing a direct transfer burn from low kerbin orbit. In this case you take advantage of the oberth effect.

True, but with enough thrust you can just carry a lot more fuel without any issues. Getting a rapier ssto to orbit is really simple. It only gets a bit harder when you also want to carry a significant payload, but thats more of an advanced lesson.

the important thing to understand is that you don't have to climb all the time while you're still in airbreathing mode. jet Isp is ridiculously good, so you want to get as much speed and altitude in airbreathign mode as possible. if you can't breach the soundbarrier while climbing, breach it in horizontal flight. once you are supersonic, the rapiers will pick up a lot more thrust, so you can accelerate a lot faster. find an ascent profile that works for your plane. flying a bit in mostly horizontal direction is fine - both altitude and horizontal speed are useful, so you don't lose anything when you're not climbing. that's the fundamental difference between planes and rockets. you want to stay in airbreathing altitudes long enough to make decent use of your jets. even the fairly "thirsty" rapier is still 4 times more fuel efficient than the nerv. so every m/s of speed and every meter of altitude you can gain in airbreathing mode consumes only 1/4th of the fuel you would spend with the nervs.

plain Rapiers are probably the easiest for a new player. something like the simple "Dove" stock design works nicely - you don't have to be a genius to get that thing to orbit and it's a fairly simple design. or a somewhat bigger Mk2 plane with multiple rapiers. ignore efficiency at first. it's much easier to get an overengineered plane to orbit (with more thrust than it really needs). though the whiplash & aerospike combination is also quite nice to fly (there's also a stock plane with that engine config). i wouldn't recommend Nervs for a new player. long range SSTO's are more of a "niche" thing (or an "advanced" use - depending on what you actually want to do with those SSTO planes once they are in orbit)

that plane has more than enough air intake. don't add more intakes, they will not help. you could probably even remove the ramp intakes. the precoolers are enough to feed the rapiers. if a slow and steady climb doesn't get you to hypersonic speeds, try an alternative ascent. that plane doesn't have much thrust at low speeds, so you'll have to make good use of the ramjet effect of the rapiers. they spool up quickly as you accelerate. here's what i would do with such a plane: keep it in mostly horizonal flight after takeoff, accelerate to about mach ~1.3 before you climb. climb at a decent angle - something like 15°. make sure you keep accelerating during the ascent. you want to get it to at least ~1200 m/s at around 20 km before you switch over to closed cycle mode and fire up the nukes. you use the mk2 cockpit, which has pretty bad heat resistance. you can't really do a proper high altitude speedrun with that thing as it will explode around 1300 m/s. since you can't "milk" the rapiers fro speed, try to gain altitude instead. by the time you switch over, your (projected) apoapsis should be at the very least somewhere upwards of 30km.

definitely possible, i built a spaceplane for one of the forum challenges that could get from the runway to duna and back without refuelling. if you add ISRU equipment, it's sort of trivial actually. just a standard SSTO with a NERVA, extra fuel and ISRU stuff.

since you said it's for gilly, you can probably circumvent the problem altogether. just slap an engine at the back of the tank and use RCS thrusters or vernor engines (i guess even reaction wheels would be enough) to push the front of the truck upwards and then fire the main engine to ascend. likewise, you can just descent retrograde until you are almost down to the ground, then use reaction wheels / RCS to rotate the craft into a horizontal position.

i guess the game can't show a target orbit when there is an infinite number of valid orbits to fulfill the contract? frankly, those contracts should not be generated at all. i guess they are supposed to be easier than a strict, fully defined target orbit, but in reality they just create confusion because there is no target orbit on the map.

i think the mun is at an exactly equatorial orbit. you should see from the ascending/descending nodes how far off you are.

the game will show 2 intersects if the 2 orbits intersect twice (ie. they are in the same plane and the PE of orbit 1 is inside orbit 2 but the AP of orbit 1 is outside orbit 2). if orbit 1 is completely inside orbit 2, only one intersect (or more precisely - one "closest approach" is shown because there is only 1 point where the 2 ellipses are closest to each other

can't look it up at the moment (no KSP on this computer), but IIRC the inner wing connectors are all attached to the main fuselage (mk3 cargo bay) and the 2nd column is attached to the inner column, the mk2 engine nacelle assemblies are attached to the 3rd "row" (the one that ends in the angled small delta wing) and there is 1 strut from between the outer an inner engine nacelle and 1 strut between the inner nacelle and the cargo bay. there may also be 1 strut between the big delta wing segment and the 2nd wing connector of the "main row". i think i added one because the deltawing would flex upwards a bit and so there is a gap in the wing during flight that just looked ugly. overall i tried to keep the strut count low. i think the whole plane has like 8 struts (2 of which are inside the cargo bay so the cargo fuel tank doesn't wobble). seemed like an acceptable tradeoff. i suppose it could be avoided with mods (procedural wings or reinforcement mods or something) but i generally (try to) solve my design problems with stock parts if possible.

removed the engines and took screenshots in the SPH editor the big bird uses mostly wing connector type B (i think) and large delta wings / structural wings type B on the outside. the small angled pieces on the tips of the wings are small delta wings. the fins at the back are also structural wings type B and the wings on the front are type A (i think), partially clipped into the fuselage (only for aesthetics) control surfaces are elevons type 3 (i think) the low tech fuel plane uses 2 wing connectors and a delta wing and the angled tips are structural wings type A. i think there's also a small wing segment (wing connector D or something?) partially clipped into the fuselage at the back. the canards are 2 pairs of standard canards and the elevons are type 1 i think (probably should have used bigger ones) not sure if the angled wing tips make much sense. i guess they would work better if they were perpendicular (?) overall, my designs aren't as elegant or efficient as some of the other examples that were shown. basically, i substitute knowledge about aerodynamics with brute force and ignorance also, i tend to pack more engines then the bare minimum necessary. it's nice to lift an orange tank to orbit with just 4 rapiers or something, but spending 20 minutes on the ascent gets old really fast. i try to aim for a thrust: weight ratio of ~0.6-0.7 at the runway, so the planes can actually break the sound barrier without a dive and can continously climb at a 15-20° degree angle and reach space almost as fast (in real time) as a rocket. savin a few minutes of playtime every flight is more valuable than saving a few hundred funds worth of fuel (to me, anyway)

strategies don't seem worth it for the most part. some of them are too expensive (setup cost) to pay off, others are just a bad tradeoff. i might actually use them more if they were rebalanced. stuff like "15% better minimal recovery value" should NOT come with a penalty (lower maximum recovery value). noone in their right mind invests resources to unlock such a strategy. spending 1000 science or 200 rep or thousands of fuds to initiate a strategy that converts one resource to another also doesn't seem worth it. i guess you could use the conversions oncew you filled out the tech tree to turn science into something more useful, but that's about it.

there is probably something like 10 times more science in the game than you need to fill out the tech tree, so don't worry about getting too much science from kerbin or someting. you'll finish the tree LONG before you visited every planet and moon. and that's not even counting the potentially unlimited science you can generate with labs. if you want a head start, use the starting science slider in the setup of the new career. if you don't want to land in 20 different moon biomes, don't do it. get enough tech to mount interplanetary missions and go to duna or ike or gilly or whatever to collect points. you might also learn a few things in the process (which may be more motivating than doing a boring "science sweep" with repeated visits to the same 2 moons over and over)

i don't have a guide, but here's a few images of SSTO planes I made. most of them are from an actual career note that some of the designs are a bit overkill. i only learned in the process that you don't really need that many air intakes, so some of them could have been built a bit more efficient easily (simply by using less intakes) panther based SSTOs are somewhat viable (even the mk3 versions), but you actually get similar results by making them pure rocket planes with no air breathers (as seen in one of the images), so the usefulness of the panther is debatable. in essence, if you want to make a panther SSTO, it's mostly a rocket anyway since the panthers only get you to about mach 2.5 at 10km or something before you have to switch over. the whiplash is an entirely different thing. they are very capable of doing most of the typical SSTO plane stuff (see the "orange tank" lifter on the last image)

i revert and reload all the time when stuff goes wrong. i suppose this behavior also qualifies as cheating. also, I use mods that make the game easier. without KER mods, my rocket designs would be a lot more inefficient (ie. overengineered or underengineered). so yeah, in a sense, I'm a cheater. and I don't care

the way the Kerbin SOI is laid out, it's actually almost impossible to get stuck on science. the only real bottleneck is the very early game. you need to gather enough science to unlock the tech required for moon landings. once you can consistently get kerbals to the 2 moons, you can "farm" plenty of science there. enough to unlock most of the tech tree. and once you unlock the mobile processing lab, you can abuse those to generate infinite science if you don't want to get the research points for the remaining nodes from other planets. you probably don't need all the science from kerbin biomes. just collect a few experiments on the launchpad and runway, maybe also landed in the nearby shores and water biomes. that should give you enough tech to get all (or most) of the stuff in the first 2 tiers. with those techs unlocked, you can build rockets that get to orbit. the science from high atmosphere and low & high orbit should be enough to get the 45 rocketry node that unlocks the terrier engine and maybe some extra points for other stuff. with the terrier unlocked, it's not too hard to do a flyby (or orbit) of both mun and minmus, so you can collect some cheap low & high orbit science from the 2 moons to unlock the tech you want for landing on the moons. once you can land on the moons, the science problem is basically solved. if you need more points for something, you can just farm them in one of the ~20 moon surface biomes that you haven't visited yet. from that point onwards, it's up to you if you go for easy (but "grindy") moon science farming or use space labs to generate research points or go for interplanetary expeditions to fill out the remainder of the tree. or any combination of those options.