Zeiss Ikon

Either Alt-F12 or the Hyperedit mod should let you place an existing craft anywhere. I've never used either one, so I'm not sure if there are limitations to Alt-F12 that might require Hyperedit for some locations.

(Career save) With Jeb "out of town" -- piloting a VIP tourist for a Munar landing excursion in a newly designed, never-before-flown lander, on a similarly brand new booster/transfer vehicle -- Val was tapped to do some test flying of an under-development spaceplane prototype. Early simulator testing wasn't promising -- roundly fifteen different versions turned out to be impossible to even get off the ground intact. Eventually, though, the guys with the hammers and wrenches in the Space Plane Hangar put together something that could at least take off and flight straight. Earlier versions had two Wheesley mounted above the wing, then below the wing, then one on top of the fuselage (like a Heinkel 111). That last one actually flew, but it would pitch up uncontrollably when the rocket booster was ignited, probably due to the unbalanced drag (the craft was already near the jet-powered service ceiling, so the Wheesley wasn't making much thrust). This technology is brand new -- the Wheesley engines and the nacelles they're mated with were in the most recent batch of "new stuff" from R&D, made possible by Jeb and Adeny remembering to do their crew reports and surface samples even on tourist flights and "haul" tests. An earlier testbed was a dismal failure; the Juno engines lack thrust (it'd take an even dozen of them to equal these two Wheesley fanjets), and there was no good way to attach them to existing aircraft parts. Put the engines in the wing roots and you get a pitch-neutral setup. This craft flies pretty well, now -- but the following pictures were from the first successful test of the previous iteration, which was a bit, um, crankier. I didn't notice until after I'd finish building and even done the test flight, the slight similarity of this layout to the Vought F7-U1 Cutlass, a Naval jet fighter from the late 1950s.

Okay, this doesn't look like much of a disaster -- but this was after tweaking and relaunching at least a dozen times, and it still only flies with SAS turned on. Without SAS, it has an uncontrollable yaw oscillation on the runway (just the Wheesley running); it's also almost impossible to rotate for liftoff without SAS and avoid destroying the Reliant with a ground strike (between the tail booms, not visible from this angle). Despite the COM being forward of the COL, and even after removing the incidence originally built into the elevons (replaced by "deploy" for stability in air-breathing flight), there's a strong tendency to enter a pitch tumble (possibly due to a wing stall). And to top it off, though I had no expectation of having enough dV from the Wheesley's ceiling (not much higher than what you see here, seemingly) to get into orbit, retracting the elevons (to zero incidence) doesn't prevent a nearly uncontrollable pitch up as soon as I ignite the Reliant (I expect that's due to the high drag axis of the Wheesley nacelle). So, though I don't have a photo of any of the many crashes, Jeb will not go to space today (even suborbital) in this spaceplane.

You'll eventually discover that if you've had to close out of the game and come back (say, because it was bedtime -- a likely cause if you work for a living and play in your limited spare time), you lose the ability to revert a flight (revert button is grayed out -- you can only revert to a launch or VAB construction within the same game session). Having quicksaves and named saves (hit ESC and then select "save game", then give the save a name you'll look for if/when you need to load to that point again), as well as the "persistent" save that updates whenever the game auto-saves can "save" your green, googly-eyed bacon.

The ballast in the cargo bay is indended to represent payload, to be unloaded in LKO. I think the demonstrator is about how small a Shuttle-like craft can be and still make orbit.

And the take-away from this is, if you have multiple craft that you need to land, either keep them close together (which I've done with command pods that I decoupled just as reentry heating started in earnest) or leave them in a stable orbit, except for the one you're actually landing. For career, this is important because an auto-deleted vessel can't be recovered for your partial parts cost refund.

@Harry Rhodan said everything that came to mind immediately when I looked at your images. Other question I have is why you're building this in the SPH when it's pretty clearly intended to be launched vertically? Click launch from there, the game will put the craft on the runway, at which point it'll break from its own weight. You'll have the launch that lander separately; there's no way it'll stay docked through max-Q or with more than 1 G trying to disconnect the docking port. Once its mounted, I don't know how you'd keep the ship in line during maneuvers. FWIW, I haven't ever played with life support, but the two missions I've sent interplanetary (one Duna flyby, and one Gilly landing) were done with ordinary chemical rockets, single launch, and had I waited for a good return window from Eve, I could have completed that mission in less than two years. Same for the Duna flyby, except I only had enough fuel (in two orange tanks) to get back to Kerbin by using a gravity assist at Duna to get an orbit that would intercept after two or three circuits.

Don't forget coffin corner, though. Speed of sound on Mars isn't much above stall speed for those Cessna models -- and that's at ground level, even in the Hellas Basin. Even a gossamer craft like the Helios would reach Mach conditions barely above stall after climbing a kilometer or two. That was the ultimate limiter for altitude of the U-2 -- the point at which stall speed approached the airframe's Mach limit. Lowering stall speed (Helios had a stall speed under 10 m/s) only helps so much -- by the time you're high enough to clear terrain (even avoiding the entire area of Olympus Mons), you're in coffin corner with any Mach-limited airframe (not to mention that Mars routinely has wind velocities that could crumple Helios like a used tissue). Oh, and batteries don't like cold weather. Even lithium batteries lose a lot of performance when cell temperature approaches 0 F (current electric and hybrid cars actually use the battery's own power to keep it warm if off charge during very cold conditions). This lowers the effective capacity of the battery, of course, though once the motors are drawing current for flight, there's enough byproduct heat that additional energy needn't be spent on warming.

You want to fly on Mars, you need a vehicle closer in overall design to an SR-71 than to a Cessna of any model (even a Citation). The SR-71 routinely flew at up to 1000 m/s, at altitudes of up to 30 km on Earth, and the limiting factors on its speed were skin heating and engine power (thrust drops as speed rises, even with the engines running in ramjet mode). Lack of a suitable air-breathing engine (due to lack of air) aside, the advantage of the SR-71 design is that the airframe is built to go really fast. In the (roughly) 1% atmosphere on Mars, it wouldn't need to fly 10x as fast, it can simply pitch up a little and fly at higher coefficient of lift to regain much/most of what was lost. Say, at worst, the aircraft has to fly 3x as fast (giving 9x the lift due to speed, and picking up the other 90x factor from flying at higher CL, you're now flying at 3 km/s. The aircraft already has a reaction control system, no need to add that -- just change out the turbo-ramjets for (much lighter -- we'll replace the extra weight with fuel) hypergolic bipropellant rockets with similar thrust. Now, takeoff and especially landing will be a major stumbling block. Stall speed calculations work the same way, so you'd need to land at a (rather hot, by any standard) approximate 700 m/s (yes, that's supersonic on Mars), and your drag parachutes won't be worth much at all. Better install some small braking engines where the engine intake cones used to be...

My experience is that "orbit around [body]" completes as soon as the Map view shows a closed ellipse path within the appropriate SOI (or periapsis is above atmosphere, if it's a Kerbin orbit) -- if that's not happening, you may have a bug of some kind. Are you running mods? If so, which? Are you sure you have the correct Kerbal aboard the craft? It's easy to cross up the passenger manifest if you accept multiple contracts at once. Is there fine print in the contract (special requirements for orbit height etc.)? Did you use too much acceleration and render the tourist unconscious from G forces? That'll cause the remainder of the contract(s) for that tourist to remain open.

Sigh. I'll go with performance issues. A game that can only run a single thread for the bulk of its computing load ought to be designed so that I don't need a 4+ GHz clock speed for that single thread (with no mods that affect performance) to handle a vessel with < 100 parts when near a planet or moon. One simple way I can see would be for the vessel to be handled as a single part after assembly, while in flight. Yeah, it would require some cleverness to deal with different part strengths under acceleration or heat stress -- but cleverness can be run on a second thread. I've got two computers that would have been genuine top-end machines not all that long ago (a 2.7 GHz Core2Quad -- that was a $1000 CPU before the Core i* family came out -- and a 2.9 GHz Core i7 dual core laptop CPU, that steps up to 3.4 GHz on demand), and stock KSP brings both to their knees -- even with many settings reduced. Yep, Core i7 at 3.4 GHz gives yellow clock with < 50 parts.

It's probably going to be critical (for those who'll try to replicate this behavior) to know what version of KSP you're using, and what if any mods. I wouldn't be surprised if posting a .craft file would be even better -- at the minimum, a VAB image showing the capsule and Ocar-B/fuel cell setup. Generally, if there's a tank directly attached to a stage, it'll drain evenly with other tanks in the stage (though flow priority can change that). If the tank is attached via a decoupler, the decoupler's crossfeed setting applies. If you have a tank that's not draining the way to expect, my experience suggests that the first thing to check is whether the tank has somehow gotten into direct contact with the stage -- I had this problem with strap-on boosters, once, where they'd drain simultaneously with the core instead of using the fuel ducts to keep the core full as the strap-ons drained -- that turned out to be due to the strap-ons clipping through the decouplers to contact the core tanks, making it all one big happy tank family. They also wouldn't stage away when the decouplers fired, which was the clue to solving the problem.

What I find really amusing is that he's not using a solid booster -- that would require a Federal explosives license to store from construction to launch -- but rather a steam rocket virtually identical in operation to Evel Knievel's Skycycle (from 1973). I wonder if he was encouraged by the successful flight of the Skycycle X-2 in the last year or two? Any case, this launch also demonstrates his inability to learn from his own mistakes; the last time he tried this, he was significantly injured on landing/impact.

And since almost no one can fly an absolutely perfect gravity turn in EVA, never mind know exactly how low their orbit can be, even if you only get 100 m/s or a couple km altitude out of your lander's remaining fuel, you virtually guarantee success at an orbit height that doesn't risk the rescue ship crashing while trying to match orbits. An orbit at 25 km indicated is high enough -- one that clears terrain by 500 meters isn't.

@Rocket In My Pocket I think you're conflating two different movies. Nostromo was the ship towing the refinery in the original 1979 Alien. The space Marines going down on the radio are from Aliens, the second movie (1982?), which didn't include a ship named Nostromo.

I haven't done this, but I should -- I have both of these on my hard disk. I'm a little older than a lot of KSP players, and one of my favorite bands, Jethro Tull, dates back to the Apollo era. Around 1969, they released a song titled "For Michael Collins, Jeffrey, and Me" -- referring, of course, to the man who was once the loneliest human in history while piloting the Apollo 11 Command Module, waiting in Lunar orbit for Armstrong and Aldrin to return from the surface of the Moon. Much later, in 1984, they released another spaceflight related song, "Apogee". Both of these would be very appropriate background music for KSP.

I'm not an expert on this kind of rendezvous, but I think the earliest launch option is the best choice. You'll be making a classic orbital rendezvous, with planes already matched and an orbital intercept established, so all you have to do is kill your relative velocity to match with the asteroid. Once you've done 95% of that, you'll gain time (because you'll stay near the target for a longer period) in which to finish matching and actually grapple into place. For a mission like this, a written checklist is a strong recommendation -- forget a critical piece of equipment, like a science instrument or (assuming you use KIS/KAS) a spare part, and you'll have a much, much harder job to send it along from Kerbin after the fact.

I run KSP, purchased direct from the web site (no Steam) on Linux. On my desktop (Core2Quad 2.7 GHz, 8 GB RAM, SSD, nVidia GTX750) I have Kubuntu 14.04.5 LTS, likely to be switched over to Ubuntu MATE 16.04.3 LTS over Christmas. My laptop (Core i7 dual core 2.9 GHz, overdrive to 3.4 GHz on demand, 8 GB RAM, platter drive, on-board Intel graphics) currently runs Ubuntu MATE 16.04.3 LTS, and my experience with that is what is (finally) prompting me to switch the desktop machine.

Jebediah stuck on the Mun => Jebediah stuck in Munar orbit (you do know, don't you, that if you have enough fuel in the lander to get even a fraction of the way to orbit, Jeb can finish making orbit with his EVA jets?). Munar orbit is a much simpler rescue mission -- even if you have to learn how -- than landing in a precise enough location for Jeb not to take weeks to walk to the new lander. I did this once, in my first sandbox save -- landed without enough fuel, got Jeb stranded in Munar orbit. Sent a rescue mission, didn't yet know how to rendezvous or dock. Didn't know how to fly an EVA pack, other than one direction boost to get to Munar orbit. Got the rescue craft stuck in Munar orbit, out of fuel and monopropellant, with dead battery, and Jeb now out of EVA propellant. Sent a second rescue, with more seats, and got that stuck in Munar orbit, without enough fuel left to return to Kerbin, and empty monopropellant -- and my last pilot aboard. That was the point where I deleted the save and started over, and spent time learning to rendezvous and dock before going to the Mun. There's a good reason NASA did those things before sending anything manned anywhere near the Moon...

You can throw stuff by hand and get noticeable reaction thrust. Say you throw a baseball at (since you're not a pitcher for MLB) 30 m/s. The ball masses around .175 kg. That gives an impulse of (30 * 1.75) = 5.25 kg*m/s -- which, assuming 100 kg of thrower plus EVA suit, would impart a velocity of about .05 m/s. Not much velocity; that's about two inches per second in American units. Still, it's not nothing. Of course, the kind of overhand baseball throw that lets you get this kind of velocity would also put you into an uncontrollable tumble... So, when you were out on the hull doing an emergency repair (hence why you'd be out there at all without either a maneuvering unit or a tether), you did remember to take your trusty sidearm (because what space libertarian would go anywhere without a gun? -- L. Neil Smith is smiling, somewhere in Colorado). In a holster on the outside of your suit. Better yet, it's been proofed for space conditions -- vacuum, which will evaporate the lubricants from the mechanism, and potentially cryogenic temperatures if it's been left in shadow for a few hours. The grip and trigger guard have been modified to allow you to use the gun with space suit gloves. You pull the gun, hold it in front of your belly (where your center of mass is), aimed directly away from your body, and pull the trigger. Since you don't like wimpy guns, it's a 10 mm Auto (the most powerful semi-auto pistol that's both easily available and for which factory ammunition is readily found), kicking a 210 grain (13.6 g) bullet out the muzzle at 1600 ft/s (488 m/s). We'll ignore the rocket effect of the gas from the cartridge -- it'll surely increase the impulse, but there's no convenient way to estimate it. We get a bit over 6.6 kg*m/s from the bullet alone, possibly as much as that again from the gas -- so, at least as much, possibly as much as double the effect of throwing a baseball, in a much more controllable package (which, conveniently, has a magazine of perhaps a dozen or more cartridges available for immediate use and is easily reloaded with a spare magazine). Better hope you brought several magazines -- if you're receding from the hull at a perceptible rate, you'll go through at least one just trying to stop...

Drawing heat from the exhaust is how cabin heat is done on virtually all unpressurized piston engine aircraft. A heat exchanger on the exhaust gives heat any time the engine is running. Air cooled Volkswagens used to use exhaust heat as well -- they'd have heat for the passenger compartment in fifteen seconds after starting, while liquid cooled vehicles take several minutes to heat the cooling jacket. Compressor bleed air is cooled with passive heat exchangers, not with heat pump cooling systems. Outside air at altitudes where pressurization is needed is frigid, even in summer over the Sahara.

I'm afraid you'll find that the reverse ramjet makes a common heat pump look like the model of efficiency in comparison. The phase change in a conventional heat pump reduces the volumetric pumping requirements by orders of magnitude -- when air was the working fluid, a refrigeration system (to chill brine, which was used to make ice) with a "one ton" rating (makes one ton of ice per day, though that's now used to represent a set number of BTU/hr -- convertible to kilowatts of heat transfer) was about fifteen times the size of a modern unit that can make five times as much ice. It used tens of times as much energy per ton, as well. On a thermodynamic basis, I think it's unlikely you'll find a heat pump cycle significantly more efficient than a phase change system based on the Rankine cycle. Might want to look into the power handling capability of Peltier junctions.

This would, for instance, allow cabin heat in a sailplane, if you could extract enough energy. Problem is, the drag -- compressing a high velocity gas stream takes a tremendous amount of energy, and gas compression is a notoriously non-reversible process (precisely because of the mechanism this is based on -- the hot compressed gas loses heat into the pipe and core body). Using this to heat the cabin in a sailplane, then, would greatly reduce the performance of the plane, if in fact you could get enough compression to even make this work at under 100 kt (where most sailplanes spend most of their flying time). In faster aircraft, you've got a reliable source of heat -- the engines -- and don't even need to draw heat from their combusions if the cabin is pressurized; the compression of air to pressurize the cabin will warm it (by the same value as metorological lapse rate, roughly around 3 degrees F per 1000 feet, or 5 degrees C per 1000 m). If you actually need a little more heat than that, just run a heat exchanger to extract heat from excess pressurizing air, and then dump the extra air (after all, a compressor bleed from a jet engine, even a turbocharger bleed for a piston engine, can provide tens of times the air volume needed for cabin pressure without affecting engine performance noticeably). IOW, this is a solution in search of a problem, and it brought several problems of its own. Pumping heat without a phase change is terribly inefficient (there's a good reason air was dropped as a working fluid for refrigeration in the 19th century, as soon as ammonia systems became available). Moving the volume of air needed, at the velocity needed, for this device would require a huge amount of power, even without the device sapping still more energy from the stream. tl;dr: yes, this is themodynamically possible, but far from practical due to poor efficiency and high power requirements.

Before Apollo was a confirmed project, there were proposals to send Gemini to the moon in real life. They'd have docked with a separately launched upper stage, like the Agena (later the name was changed to Centaur, still in service well into the Shuttle era) that was the docking target for Gemini 8 (?), used that to push them (backward) to Lunar orbit, then used one of several proposed Gemini-based landers to descend to the Lunar surface and return. The whole thing could have been done with the same Atlas and Titan boosters that launched Mercury and Gemini capsules. Atlas-Agena supplied a fueled upper stage in orbit, Gemini-Titan had enough spare delta-V to launch an upgraded capsule with lander stages, and Bob's your uncle. Would have been possible to land on the Moon in 1968, but NASA decided it was too risky to push the Gemini capsule that far and by the time Gemini had demonstrated docking, Apollo and the Saturn family were already under construction.

Yep, I figured that out myself a while ago. I'll still go to a different station to get a lower gas price -- especially if it's as much as ten cents a gallon difference -- but it'll be a station that's on my way or barely out of my way. I'll get off the highway, fill up at one of the near-exit stations, and get back on the highway to save as little as a nickel a gallon, since the time it takes to fill the tank is the same, and I'm spending at most a minute or two extra getting off the highway and back on. I won't make a left instead of a right to save a penny a gallon, on the other hand (unless there's no traffic, so the left doesn't take any longer). I haven't gotten the Mk .1-2 yet in my career game, but I'll surely use it (at least for missions that require two or more Kerbals) when I get it -- I'll be flying a lot of 2.5 m hardware by then (I've already got the 2.5 m tanks, adapter tank, and Skipper; just built a Mun/Minmus lander partially based on 2.5 m hardware). As previously noted, design time is worth something too, and the Mk. 1-2 can survive reentry from almost anywhere, even with extra stuff stuck on that 1.25 m nose.