Aegolius13

Like the Whiplash? I know very little about real life engines, but aren't the SR-71 engines ramjet-ish, and still capable of flying from standstill (albeit not at great performance)? Ditto for the SABRE, at least as designed.

I like the idea of a "hotel" part - a crew module that's design for long term habitation, with contracts to put either astronauts or Kerbals there for a certain length of time. And make it bulky enough, heavy enough, and/or demanding enough on electricity, that it would take a true space station or base to support it. This would kind of emulate the higher needs for life support without going into all the detail that the mods do. Also, I think they still do not have the mechanics of the Mobile Processing Lab quite right, but I'm not sure exactly what the fix is. If I were starting from scratch, I might allow it to transmit samples back to Kerbin without penalty, but without the crazy multiplier it has now (two guys in a module can learn more about a sample than all the scientists back home? ). And then maybe have specific contracts to bring back certain samples to the MPL, with a reasonable science reward.

Do we know the masses of these engines yet? It's kind of hard to tell how each good each engine will be without that info. (Cost is also relevant to some extent, of course). The Pug looks pretty cool. While the Spark is a good all-purpose small engine, I do kind of hold my nose when I put it on a vacuum lander due to its not-great vacuum ISP. Sounds great to have a specialist engine for this role. I am skeptical about buffing the TwinBoar unless there's some corresponding drawback. It's already maybe a little too good compared to the Mainsail - cheaper, better thrust, ISP difference is small and not that important in a booster... Sounds like the Boar will kind of usurp the Vector's current role as a midsize launch engine between the Skipper and Mainsail. Since the new Vector is listed as a sustainer, maybe they'll improve its vacuum ISP a bit? (But unlikely if they want to leave the Mammoth as the big launch engine, and keep the Mammoth's stats as basically four vectors). I already don't use the Vector much in career mode because it's cheaper to just buy a Mainsail or TwinBoar and more fuel.

There are few threads around here on "gate orbits" you might want to check out. Basically if you could leave from anywhere fully fueled, a gate orbit is the ideal orbit to get to another body with the least fuel consumption. There's a different gate orbit for each destination. In general, they're higher than LKO - the savings from already being higher in the gravity well outweighs the Oberth loss, up to a point. Since Minmus is pretty far out near the edge of the SOI, it's probably further out than most gate orbits. But being able to leave fully fueled is a big advantage. As you say, the main issue may be leaving at the right time. Since Minmus' orbit is relatively slow, it might be hard to hit a launch window perfectly. You could also consider refueling at the Mun, which might be closer to the gate orbits, has more Oberth, and revolves around Kerbin more quickly for those launch windows. Obviously it takes more delta-v to lift fuel off the surface of teh Mun, but if you refuel your planetary ship in orbit, that doesn't hurt your maximum range. All that said, I have just done direct burns from LKO on my interplanetary missions, as the savings was not worth the extra work (or I was deliberately avoiding refueling, so I had to design around the tyranny of the rocket equation). One thread on gate orbits:

If you have a good way to get your whole package into low Laythe orbit, the actual descent itself should be fine. I think my mothership was at 60km or so. I did an imprudently steep reentry burn (landing less than 1/4 orbit in front of my current position) because I wanted to hit a particular island and was too lazy to go around one more orbit. Even so, my plane held up OK heat-wise. The nosecone intake was unsurprisingly the hottest part, but it did not come that close to blowing up. If you're curious, my Jool 5 mission report (including some pics and narrative of Laythe lander) is at:

On my Jool 5, my mothership was transferring from Tylo. I've also done transfers from Kerbin in standalone spaceplanes. In either case, I could not aerocapture safely. But once I burned into a highly elliptical orbit with periapsis in high Laythe atmosphere, and apoapsis out near the edge of Laythe's SOI, it was possible to descend with multiple aerobrake passes. If you can figure out how to get a heat shield in front of your ship, might be possible to aerocapture direct from Kerbin, or from a Tylo gravity assist.

I think the easiest is to have a mining ship that includes both drills and ISRU. You can fill it up with fuel on the surface, send it to orbit, then refuel your ships with regular docking maneuvers. You don't need much ore storage this way, but you need at least one tank to feed into the ISRU.

I did not refuel on the surface. The plane did not need much fuel anyway, and ISRU would have added more weight and complexity than was worth it. Reentry from low Laythe orbit did not get that hot, even with a full tank of fuel and a steep reentry path. It's getting to that low orbit that's problematic, if you want to aerobrake. I did that with my mothership - burn to capture, then GRADUALLY aerobrake over successive passes to low orbit.

I just did a small 1 rapier plane for a Jool 5. A few tips I came across: You may want to add more wing than you would on Kerbin. The surface atmosphere is thinner, and a low takeoff / stall speed will help you work with the bumpy terrain. If you go Mk 1, I'd use the inline cockpit and put something more heat resistant in front. One rapier can get a small plane going very fast and hot, easily enough to blow up the regular cockpit. It did not take much LF to ascend on jet mode, so even one Mk 1 fuel tank was overkill. You could use a rocket tank and drain a little oxidizer, and/or use the precooler, NCS adapter or a Mk 0 tank to get a little fuel. In thinner air, reaction wheels are comparatively better, and control surfaces are comparatively worse. If you send a skilled pilot, consider leaving off a probe core to save electricity. I just had a couple small solar panels for emergency, but relied on a 1k battery for the most part.

Hypersonic biplanes... Or triplanes... Fastidiouly taking barometer readings in deep space. Using airplane parts because your nuclear engine was not designed to work with rocket parts. Using an RTG in a Cessna-type light plane because it's easier than a fuel cell. Intentionally spinning out of control to survive reentry better. Landing on a grass field is easier than the runway. The Klaw can latch onto anything... Except the ground. "Explosive decoupling" is like the entire Kerbal experience in two words.

I would recommend a mod that shows delta v available for each stage, like Kerbal Engineer Redux. You can try different engines and see what gives the biggest delta v. Then you can decide how to balance that with your thrust needs. Note that low engine mass can give you more delta v on small stages, even if ISP is not great. For example, on small satellites , an Ant and a couple Oscar B tanks can do wonders. And that package is so light that the next stage can be small as well. And so on...

Are your wheels rotated straight down, using the absolute rotation function ("f" key)? What speed is this happening? You may need more wing, pitch authority or angle of incidence to take off slower. You could also try moving your rear landing gear forward a little, if that does not cause a tail strike. But odds are good you just need heavier landing gear, especially at the rear.

I got a contract to put a wheeled base on Ike, with 6,000 liquid fuel and a bunch of other stuff. I planned to land it mostly empty and refill with ISRU. This was the biggest, most complicated rover build I've done. Launching, flying and especially landing were tricky. I had to do some crazy fuel transfers to keep the thing balanced on landing, since I was using side mounted engines to land wheels-down. When I finally landed, the rover would not stop rolling due to the wheel bug. So I had to reload and painstakingly land in another spot. Then, finally, my rover was ready to refuel and complete the contract. That's when I realized I forgot to include an ore tank.

I have never found a use for the bigger fairings. Too heavy, draggy and expensive. I just launch big wheeled vehicles uncovered. Not realistic, but it works. You may want to do a more gradual gravity turn to compensate for the uneven aerodynamics. You could try clipping the wheels closer to the vehicle, but that may invite the Kraken. The big wheels are also a pain to drive: slow and hard to steer. The smaller ruggedized wheels would probably work with that rover, and they're much lighter to boot. Sometimes you can get the 2.5m fairing to fit wider loads, but it may suffer from the same problems at max size.

I'm not sure I follow the situation. Can you see Jeb's ship from the traking center or map view? If you go to the astronaut center, what does it say about your dudes (killed, active, MIA)? What kind of orbit was Jeb in? A stable orbit? Was he so low he might have hit a mountain? As I understand it, Jeb, being a primal force of nature, will respawn after a while, but later recruited kerbals won't. If they're gone, you can try going back to an earlier save, or editing your save file (which is tricky).

So it only works if you have a probe core, not just a manned vessel? I get that probe cores are now going to be constrained by the communications network. But it does seem odd that they're otherwise making probe cores even better, considering they're currently far superior for just about everything but a few science tasks. Of course, even most of my manned craft tend to have a probe core anyway, so maybe it's not that big of a deal.

I haven't finished exploring yet. But beyond "exploring" in the narrow sense of landing on bodies, collecting science, etc., you can do: -Asteroid redirects. -Specific challenges like Jool 5 or Grand Tour. You go to the same places but get different design and piloting challenges. -Or you can make up your own challenges. If you used ISRU the first time, try going without. Or send more kerbals. Or send the lightest ship you can. Maybe build a base on Laythe and use airplane expeditions. -Random contract missions. Sometimes they don't make much sense. But sure, why NOT drop a base with 5000 ore and three viewing cupolas on Moho? There are also mods to add new contracts. -Spaceplanes, if you haven't done them along the way. -Mods to add new planets, or RSS.

I have seldom found a need for drogues when reentering Kerbin - your craft slows pretty quickly from there to safe parachute speeds. The one exception is my suborbital tourist "ship" (aka capsule on top of thumper), which goes almost straight up and down. Hasn't crashed yet.... Drogues are great on Duna, though. Also worth noting that the inflatable heat shield, in addition to shielding from heat, slows you down to a ridiculous extent. I would recommend it over the two larger conventional heat shields for most applications.

Some contracts require you to right click a part and select "test," and others require you to activate the part by staging. Are you sure you're trying the right option? If all else fails and you think you've accomplished it, you can manually set the contract to complete with the alt-F12 menu.

Your profile will depend hugely on how much TWR you're packing. On the lander for my recent Jool 5, I started with a TWR only a bit over 1. I had to begin my descent from a 40km-ish orbit, and burn retrograde basically all the way down. Also, while Tylo is not hugely mountainous, topography can make the difference between "perfect suicide burn" and plain old suicide + burning. Thus, it's likely you'll have to use a little trial and error to get it just right. If you think you have a little spare delta-v, obviously better to err on the side of starting higher.

We've all been there, I think. I had this exact problem on some huge rover/base I was launching, and I went through all kinds of aerodynamic and mass balancing shenanigans before figuring out my own SAS had betrayed me. Enjoy the Mun!

Actually yeah, subbing in a docking port instead of the decoupler inside your fairing might the easiest way to add an up-facing control point. You can right click it in the VAB to enable staged release, like a decoupler, or just right click it on the ship when you want to release.

Yup, I tried flying it and the navball was a field of brown - the active control point is upside down. My suggestion: flip the HECS to face upright and use that as your initial control point. Once your lander deploys and you want it to face the right way, select the lander can as the control point. Other than navball orientation and SAS direction, it should make no difference for any other functionality. You can always stick another probe core somewhere along your stack, though floppiness may ensue unless you put it in a cargo bay. You could also try just using the basic SAS instead of "hold prograde". Or, I suppose, you could use "hold retrograde," I guess? Though the very prospect terrifies me.

Yeah, by "reasonably," I meant more along the lines of "keep your LF engines at full throttle, use a few SRBs and don't set your SRB thrust limit too low."

OK, one more idea. Are you sure you're controlling the craft from an upward facing control point? If the ship is trying to fly from a sideways or upside-down probe core on, say, the rover, SAS can do some very weird things. This, along with a misaligned center of mass, are the two things that have caused my rockets to crash super-quickly at launch like you're describing.