Leafbaron

As an American, naturally I love the units of my measurement system. Other than that there is no argument for it. Metric is vastly easier. there are 1000 mm in a meter. there is 1000 m in a kilometer, etc. 1000 mL in a liter. versus "standard" there are 16 measurements in an inch and 12 inches in a foot and arbitrarily 5280 feet in a mile. 128 oz to a gallon etc...... nothing about it is streamlined.

@DoctorDavinci remind what category you are in again? mod, stock or casual?

yeah with the stock reaction wheel 5 torque in each axes seems to be able to handle it. Though i guess i depends on how asymmetric the thrust is. but for most of my designs its seems to work well.

as you burn fuel, your craft becomes lighter, however your engine has the same thrust. So as the ship burns your TWR ratio increases, which allows you to accelerate faster. for instances given those numbers you were accelerating at 1.72 m/s on average for that first burn. and 6.9 m/s on average for the mun burn, even the the ship is lighter and has higher thrust to weight ratio, it's isp is the same which means each unit of LFO it throws has the same change in velocity. man, i think you're confusing weight and mass. Mass doesn't change no matter what gravity your in, mass is an objects resistance to acceleration. your ships mass doesn't change just because it is in a lighter gravity or heavier gravity like the Mun and Minmus. Its weight may change but not the mass. 1 kg of XYZ is still 1 kg no matter where in the universe it is. And throwing 1kg of mass out of your rocket is gonna have the same cause and effect on your rocket no matter where you are beeeeeeecaaauuuuuuseeeee the mass of the ship doesn't change, newtons third law. We can run through my methodology when ever you'd like if you wish.

Here's the link to the Mun first run - http://imgur.com/a/tH1De, 6,954 m/s dV I set everything up and Mech Jeb executed for consistencies sake. Here's the link to the Minmus first run - http://imgur.com/a/TOwnS, 6978 m/s dV, I apoligize, i didn't get all the photos for this run, thought i was hitting F1 but i didn't capture dV readings after every manuever. Starting craft was the same as in mun first mission. total dv invac on launch pad was 8327 m/s I just quicksaved when i was in orbit of kerbin. then started each run from there. when i did the minmus run i hyper edited craft to 0 inclination with minmus orbit, i assume if you were doing minmus first you would launch into matching planes with minmus. so there was no plane change to encounter minmus. I flew both missions with identical efficiency, and the difference is negligible. Fuel is dV, what do you think goes out the back of the rocket to make you move? the mass of the fuel is being thrown out the back of the rocket at high velocity. fuel IS your potential for change in velocity.

doing it right now.

Use the .625m reaction wheel, that should counter the torque of any offset thrust. If you don't like the look of just clip it into the probe core. Thats one technique I use to make probes.

3300-3500 to get to orbit, 960 to minmus, 80 to circularize, 170 to land, 170 to orbit again, 150 to escape minmus, 200-250 to cicularize at mun, 500-600 to land, 500-600 to take off, 200 to return to kerbin. total 6300-6500 total d/v. I still believe the order doesn't matter. we are in an energy debt to gravity and it must be paid.

Im not sure if the order matters. gravity is gravity and it must be paid. if you were working with a lower TWR and it required the ship to be less full for the mun then i would say flip flop them. I just assumed it needed to be manned, but it does not explicitly say whether it needs to be or not. so long as your dry mass is .5 tons and your rocket as at least 310 isp average. you can achieve the required d/v to do it. but if you made one thats awesome! I can't wait to see it. your dV margins are gonna be tighter than a drum in the texas heat.

ultimately, Funds are worth time. you trade your time which can never be replaced for a piece of paper with numbers on it.

what was the Dv and time to get there?

works well for early LFO SSTOS on account of the relatively high atm and vac. Isp.

Hello! I'm Mr. Meeseeks!

is the ultimate difficulty even doable? The spark with 16 kN of thrust on the launch pad and if the vehicle is 5 tons only had .33gs accelerations. adding 4 to achieve the required thrust for lift off plus the other equipment needed would put your dry mass at roughly 1 ton. ln (5/1)*9.81*310 (averaging out atmospheric burn time with near vacuum isp) gives you roughly 4900 m/s of dv. 3500 to get to LKO, 853 to get to mun, 250 for orbit circulation, another 500-600 to land, then another 500-600 to orbit again, then another 100 to escape mun. then minmus. already we are at 5700 m/s of dV just to land and get back to orbit at the mun. If you time it right and use the ejection burn at the mun to encounter minmus, you'd need probably 80 ms to circularize at minmus then 160 to land. then 160 to orbit again then at least 180 to return back to kerbin. TOTAL DV is roughly 6280 m/s. I suppose you could use the ion engine and achieve the proper thrust to land on the mun but then electric charge becomes worrisome. I don't think the ultimate challenge is doable i just don't see a way to achieve the required TWR and d/v requirements with only 5 tons.

It would be nice if the parts you tested for contracts you got to keep after a successful test. Maybe in addition to the initial contract, completion of a bonus objective adds the part permanently to your inventory.

Been messing around in GPP. Like @DarkOwl57, I am an SSTO person. So all mission directives have the end goal of unlocking space plane parts. Can't wait to see how I do landing at an inclined runway. EDIT: GPP has been a blast! Don't know if I can ever return to stock KSP.

with the standard xenon engine in the game at 4200 ISP it is impossible to get over 189,742 m/s dv. The craft would need to be 100% fuel to achieve that 189 number. not to mention adding life support for possibly thousands of years of travel. Cargo makes a huge difference.

its not perfect but like he says in the video, to achieve densities that Kerbin bodies have there would need to be an element with those densities which currently has yet to be discovered by mankind. It'd be cool if you could introduce a new element to universe sandbox with the properties you want though.

I think those a points are a matter personal playstyle. For me I play career because you start with nothing and you have to manage money wisely. But I only do contracts I want to do. If none of them suite my fancy then i just ignore them until something pops up. I have never used contracts as a guide to progression, some may have. and with the current contract system, Those players may be steered wayward. unless the pursue just the world first milestones contracts you can get, which do logically proceed with difficulty. "escape the atmosphere", "orbit kerbin" "fly by the mun" "orbit the mun" etc....

Yeah sure no questions contracts could use some work, however, the thread is reasons to keep playing career. I think setting your own goals would qualify as a reason, especially if doing science is something you enjoy doing but find yourself filling the tech tree out too quickly.

Its easy to unlock the tech tree from the Mun and Minmus but what if you restricted yourself to just one fly by and one landing per body? That would force you to venture further to unlock science without just re running multiple missions in kerbin SOI.

This video the guy builds the kerbol system in universe sandbox, which i've read is a very accurate simulator. i believe he talks about the joolian system around 14 minutes. The oxygen very possible, however the liquid water not so much. The gravitational tidal forces are not enough to keep the planet above freezing. but honestly who knows. anything is possible. if laythe had a molten iron core like earth things could be different.

Please let me know how it goes!

My god, This challenge is epic. very interested.... Any idea on the Dv requirements for the nearest star system? and time to get there? its gotta be hundreds of years! I mean with the dark drive from OPT and an 87.5% fuel mass ratio. you can achieve 265191.1798 m/s of dv. but getting that kind of ratio with life support is going to be extremely difficult.

I can't believe how much doing the caveman challenge increased my proficiency and resourcefulness for the game. I'm taking a break between the normal difficulty and the moderate difficulty challenge and playing GPP. Last night I sent a mission to Iato (the closest Moon in GPP). i forgot solar panels and instead of scrapping the mission I used the ships slightly asymetric thrust to spin the craft retrograde to return to kerbin as well as Bob's EVA thrust. Mission was a success. Next mission I was doing LGO rescues and came in a little hot and blew up the rocket motor leaving my rescue ship stranded in orbit. Well i got out and pushed it home. All these things i wouldve never thought to do before the caveman challenge where things mission profile changes such as these are mandatory. Getting stoke to do the Moderate Challenge.