Zeiss Ikon

Ignition (by John Drury Clark) would be the first book I'd recommend if you're interested in history of rocketry. Rockets are no good without propellants, every rocket designer since Goddard has known that. Goddard's own biography, and Willy Ley's autobiography, should also be on the list. I think there was an equivalent work for von Braun. For orbital mechanics, I don't know if there can be a combination of accurate and readable. I'm pretty good at transfers in KSP, and I still can't do the math to actually calculate things like the phase angle, transfer time, and so on for Hohmann transfers -- fortunately, for a game that's supposed to be fun as well as scientific, the game lets me just noodle at it until it works.

I just have full screen selected in the Graphics settings accessible from the main menu. Seems borderless to me. Of course, I'm running RSS/RO/RP-1 and I'd be pretty happy to get a ten minute start time...

And I've been playing for a couple years and never managed that yet.

Second to @RizzoTheRat -- I'm currently running RSS, along with Realism Overhaul and Realistic Progression (RP-1) on 1.6.1, and I'm told the same mod set runs on 1.7.3. I'd strongly suggest having a completely independent install for a heavily modded game like RSS/RO/RP-1; if you mod the Steam-internal installation, every time Steam updates the game it'll break the whole thing. As noted, it's not difficult to copy your installed game from where Steam stores it, and after it's copied the copy will be immune to Steam updates, making it (relatively) safe to mod. Same thing goes for a copy bought direct from the KSP pages -- you can keep multiple installs in different versions, and you'll need to keep the RSS/RO/RP-1 install separate from any others, because generally all mods will affect all saves in a given installation.

Looks to me like black snake that swallowed a biggish rat.

Actually, I think you're mostly right, @ElWanderer. I found I had the booster Avionics core set as root, when it should have been the Upper stage core (they sandwich that decoupler). Stages after dropping the root part often show incorrect dV, for exactly the reason you give -- MJ makes an assumption about staging order. The displayed dV was most likely that of the engine, tank, and avionics core, without the actual spacecraft. I deorbited this one and fixed the root, redesigned the solar layout to actually produce enough power for the avionics, at least in optimum orientation, and added fuel. Hopefully there's enough margin in the Achilles and AJ10 second stage to still make orbit. Sim will tell next time I have time to play.

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) I spent my free time yesterday redesigning Diana Mk. 3 to increase battery life without adding weight (and losing dV). MechJeb reported, in the VAB, that I'd succeeded. MechJeb lies. MechJeb claims this stage has 1100 or so m/s to spare for the Lunar insertion maneuver (it's a flyby, so I don't need another stage or kicker beyond that, and I do have RCS for small corrections). But note the short red stripe at the bottom of the burn indicator, and the red burn time? My burn is 9 seconds longer than the fuel i have left, (on burn time MJ and the main game seem to agree), and I run dry when my apogee is just over a quarter of the way to the Moon. This stage ought to be able to do this; the same engine and tank, pushing a heavier spacecraft, made the trip on the previous attempt from the same orbit, with a couple hundred m/s larger insertion burn (but the batteries ran down before the SOI change). I'm about to go fiddle with the maneuver node to see if I can save a couple hundred m/s on the maneuver; if I can't, I may have to rush the construction on the next iteration to have a chance to fly the mission before the contract runs out (it was two years, but this is the second attempt and these rockets take about nine months to build and roll out) -- or take my medicine and let it expire (or cancel it). One time won't bankrupt the program, but this problem with dV estimation needs to be solved before we reach the point where vehicles take even longer to build, cost even more, and potentially have lives on the line.

There is only a single tank connected to the engine used for this burn. The final spacecraft has a tank, but there's a decoupler between with crossfeed disabled, and I pulled the UDMH/IWFNA tanks out of it last trip to the VAB (to lighten the stage, forgot that stuff was in there from a previous design version), so that stage only ever had nitrous oxide (monopropellant for RCS). @Laie I do have Test Flight (gives me something to cuss at, if I didn't already have enough of those), but the engine icon is staying white through the burn. I'm just seeing the dV in the MechJeb display drop faster than the remaining dV for the node. And I'm starting with a small red stripe at the bottom of the node dV display (1.6.1 is mostly new to me, too, I didn't catch what that was at first). So, apparently MechJeb is practicing for his next job as a used car salesman.

Other shift? I'm on Linux; my two shift keys have different functions in game. If you're on Windows, it may be ALT instead.

My RO/RP-1 career is in 1965, now attempting uncrewed Lunar flyby missions. That's fourteen years since start on 1 January, 1951. Kerbal construction time is to blame...

Going out the door to work, but I'll try to check those other parameters when I get home. As a first expectation, I don't have anything leaving the stage other than propellants, there's no boil-off (UDMH and white fuming nitric acid are long-term storable), and the entire burn is at app. 330 km altitude, almost 200 km above the sensible atmosphere.

You have full tanks, but the tankage in that module seemingly only holds about 53-54 units of LFO -- it's enough to run your engine for about a second, and your intended burn is four seconds.

I'm playing 1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1. I've got a Lunar flyby mission in parking orbit; it's the second attempt (first ran out of batteries in the 3 day orbit to the Moon). The first Lunar flyby had no problem with the trans-Lunar insertion maneuver -- I set up the node, used RCS to settle the fuel, started the AJ10-37, and shut down when the remaining node velocity was close to zero, then oriented the vessel to get sun on the solar panels and warped to the SOI change -- only to find the batteries dead. Okay, added battery, split up the avionics to get the lowest possible power draw, removed some tanks of hypergolic fuel from the final bus tank (left over from an earlier design iteration, missed in the review -- giving a net mass reduction compared to the previous iteration (spent 200+ days building, and 38 days rolling out to the pad). Launched to parking orbit. My maneuver for a 2000+ km Lunar periapsis shows as 3100.5 m/s, which is about what I'd expect from a 330 km circular parking orbit. MechJeb's Delta-V display shows the stage with over 4200 m/s/ On-board avionics hold node pointing during the burn, but over the course of the burn I go from 1100 m/s to spare, smoothly down to coming up about 230 m/s short. Somehow, I'm gradually losing 1300 m/s over the course of a routine burn that worked fine (including leaving hundreds of m/s spare dV from a 4100 m/s stage) on the previous flight. What could do this? Pointing isn't drifting off the node; I'm starting the 1:53 burn at -57 seconds, which ought to give an orbit I can easily correct with RCS en route (it came out perfectly on the previous flight). There's no indication of an low-grade engine failure (I've watched the engine status through one retry). Hmm. I just looked at the paused game screen again, and the burn shows 1:53 for 3100.5 m/s, but MechJeb says I have 1:44 available propellant to provide 4238 m/s from the stage. Seems like a little discrepancy there. My burn time matches the node display -- not the MechJeb one. I have a quick-save from about 3 minutes before the node, and I can, if it'll make a difference, cancel and recreate the node. I'm in a stable parking orbit, though I still don't have enough solar panels to stay in orbit forever -- but another hour and a half shouldn't make much difference relative to a three day orbit to the Moon.

Thanks, Laie. I've never gotten a decent orbit manually in RO -- in the stock(ish) game I've always done it by pushing apo up to the desired height, then setting up a node to circularize while I coast up. Obviously, can't do that with a single ignition. I find it hard to watch time to apo, fuel, and velocity all at the same time, but it sounds like that's what's needed. I presume you'd use an action group to shut down the LR-105 and let the LR-101s burn. When I've gotten MJ to fly this booster to orbit, it was with a second stage (which was heavy enough to be required for orbit), and MJ handles that fine, though I'm not sure how much better it'd do if it actually planned for the big drop in TWR at staging. But yes, MJ pitches up a bunch (25-30 degrees?) after staging, then pitches the next stage down pretty sharply once it's burning. I've been presuming the big pitch-up was to compensate for the sudden drop in thrust/acceleration, since the curve up to staging was based on about five times the thrust and exepecting conventional staging after less than three minutes. I understand the Prime Vector Guidance code is based on actual NASA guidance code, but last I read (a year or so ago) the devs were working on upgrading from Gemini-era code (for Titan II etc. conventional staging) to Shuttle-era code (accounts for thrust drops before MECO, but via booster burn-out rather than timed shutdown; that is, MJ can "know" before launch when thrust will drop and how much). I might have to put in a feature request to support timed staging, but it's probably not worth the devs' effort to support a sort of niche booster (the low reliability engine stage is fairly short in RO -- from first launch to early manned orbit, but really only matters from around 1957-1963 equivalent -- and the Atlas equivalent is the only booster type that needs this, since the Russian line went with conventional side boosters). Honestly, if I'd known this was a problem, I'd probably have just bypassed the whole stage-and-a-half setup, by using tanked booster like the Soviets did -- but it does perform significantly better than conventional staging for unreliable engines, and saves funds on engines and tanks compared to the Soviet method.

The Nav ball has different symbols for prograde ( closing with target) and retrograde ( moving away from target). If your prograde marker is on or close to the target marker on the nav ball, you're approaching. If it's the retrograde marker near the target, you're moving away. When you click the handles on the maneuver node, you can hold the shift key (IIRC -- been playing RO so long and so badly, I haven't done a rendezvous in a year or more -- just today got an RO career to the point of using nodes again) to greatly slow the rate of change for a given movement of the node handle.

I'm playing 1.6.1 with RSS, Realism Overhaul, and RP-1 (the latter probably relevant only in that it's responsible for my rocket design). I've built a rocket that's a pretty good likeness of an Atlas -- not the early SM-65 ICBM (that was the first version), but the next generation that actually launched John Glenn et. al. into orbit in a succession of Mercury spacecraft. I have verified that it can make orbit, at least without a payload, by manually launching in simulation; I can fly it to a marginal orbit (apogee too high, perigee well down in the atmosphere) using only Smart A.S.S. and a simple gravity turn (establish 5 degrees pitch at appr. 50 m/s, then follow SVEL+). I know MechJeb can do it better than that. At the point of staging away the booster engines, I'm above 2500 m/s horizontal velocity, and immediately after staging, MechJeb's dV display shows above 6000 m/s remaining in the tank (orbit is appr. 7800 m/s). TWR is just above 1 at staging, 2;15 after launch, with (current iteration) 3:20 remaining with the center sustainer engine. If I attempt to engage MechJeb Ascent Guidance (RSS/RO version, what used to be call PEG) on the launch pad, however, the autopilot will not advance the throttles and displays "target unreachable" -- even when I have the target set to 142 km apogee and 0 perigee (signifying circularize), "current" inclination (28.6 or so degrees, launching from Canaveral), so about the least dV requirement you can have (barring moving the launch site to the equator or similar). Auto staging is off (doesn't work well with low tech rockets, which often require things like hot staging and always need ullage management). I've been assuming this is because MechJeb is failing to calculate the dV correctly due to boosters and sustainer running off the same tank, hence no cue for MJ that I'll be ditching a bunch of mass when the TWR starts to get high. Clearly, the rocket is short dV without staging the boosters -- it shows only about 8660 m/s in the VAB, and my recent experience is I need around 9200 there to reach a stable orbit (gravity losses etc.). Is there a known way to get MJ to correctly handle stage-and-a-half launchers (image below is the ICBM version, but the new one differs only by having a longer tank and higher thrust)?

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) Now, that's what I call success. Of course, it helps that kerosene burning engines are so much more efficient and powerful than alcohol burners. I showed Achilles Mk. 1, an actual ICBM, recently. Here's what came of beating that particular sword into a plowshare: Diana Mk. 2 is an Achilles Mk. 1 carrying a new AJ10-38 upper stage, well provisioned RCS section, and that fairing (2.5 m diameter, so around twice the volume of the Javelin family fairing). This launch is to the north, aimed at a sun-synchronous orbit (note the ring of solar panels around the RCS tank). This is the step that always astonished me about Atlas, back in the day (when I was just about old enough to make sense of the layout and staging process, and Atlas still had three engines at launch). We're going to drop the booster engines, and their thrust structure and fairing, around the center engine, at Mach 3! And yet, somehow, I'm not aware of NASA having any failures attributable to the booster section striking the sustainer engine, even though they probably launched thirty or forty of these before the redesign that took away the stage-and-a-half feature. Well, as the guy in the XKCD cartoon says, "It works in Kerbal Space Program!" After staging, the TWR drops from around 5 just before the event, to just about 1. Higher acceleration isn't needed now; the apogee is above 200 km and the game now is all about horizontal velocity. Not pictured here, but MechJeb pitches up pretty hard for a while just after staging, then levels off near the end of the burn. This is about controlling vertical velocity in order to arrive at the right height (programmed orbit perigee) at the right time (just as the new apogee comes up to its programmed height). Once the upper stage is ignited, MechJeb pitches down in order to push the apogee around to the other side of the Earth and build up orbital speed while maintaining control of the orbit's shape (in this case, the contract was to have perigee above 300 km and eccentricity .02 to .04 -- vs. the actual 0 MechJeb can produce if asked to circularize. The booster core tumbles engine-forward as soon as control is removed. The big empty tank acts like the shaft and feathers of an arrow, while the engine is the heavy head. Even at 70+ km, there's enough air to turn an uncontrolled object moving at 5000 m/s to point the heavy end forward. And Solar 1 is stable, parameters 330x700 km, 97 degrees inclination -- and we have 98% RCS propellant remaining. Telemetry shows power flowing from solar panels -- currently approximately 11 W total. Contract payment is confirmed.

I currently play RO, and don't have restarting engines yet -- so, none. Ideally, I want to make my orbit with just a whisper left...

Couldn't tell you how many hours I've spent. i got frustrated with RO and quit cold for a few months, and then came back when I could confirm RO was updated for 1.6.1. I hope I'll never have to quit playing. Best $40 (game and one DLC, so far) ever spent on entertainment.

Okay, @Fizwalker, I'm home again now, opened the game (takes 10+ minutes, and I had 5 until I had to head for work): the "Modular Tank" family I'm using (in favor over the older, "deprecated" Procedural Tanks) is ROTanks. The tanks have nice textures (been using them exclusively in this save, other than one airplane I imported from a previous save that had an inaccessible, embedded Tank I), and every single bit and piece can be recolored -- without losing the corrugations and other details. Same stats as the old, obviously (else they'd unbalance RO), but much more versatile for the builder, as you can include various nose tapers and looks, base tapers, flairs, fairings, etc., as well as having a very broad and precise range of capacity adjustments. That Achilles tank is one piece, from a framed dome base (very similar to the center engine thrust structure on the real Atlas) all the way up to the inset dome nose attachment structure. Pull the other bits off it, and it looks quite a lot like an actual 1960 vintage Atlas tank.

FWIW, MechJeb can auto launch into the plane of a selected target (body or vessel, should work with asteroids as well). The checkbox is in Ascent Guidance, just set it up and MJ will auto warp, auto launch, and guide the launch into the target's plane.

No, that's the recoloring tool built into the new (to me, at least) "Modular Tank" family (which replaces the "deprecated" procedural tanks I've used in earlier versions of RO -- contains a basic tank, Service Module, and Balloon tank models). Don't have time to start the game and check which mod this came from, but I set the color to "silver" preset and turned "specular" all the way up.

(1.6.1 RSS/RO/RP-1) I was frustrated after my first attempt at a sun-synchronous orbit and solar powered satellite failed when Diana Mk. 1 came up a few dozen m/s short of the required orbit. Clearly, I'd reached the end of what alcohol engines could do, both in terms of performance (at least within a 150 T limit for the freshly upgraded second pad complex) and reliability. Some tech had completed while I was waiting on the build for the last Diana Mk. 1 launch, however. First, I built a few of these, and let Jeb and Val each take a couple hops, with "X-Plane High" and "Crewed Suborbital" contracts. Meet. Hermes Mk. 2 (Mk. 1 was a death trap that only flew once; the less said about that the better). Yep, it's a Javelin Mk. 1 with wings and control surfaces added (hint: remember how a Redstone was steered?). With the tank upgraded to Tank III tech, it can launch a pilot above 220 km. The first couple flights, with the original Tank I, flew to around 90 km; from that height it's possible to round up from the near-vertical dive of the vessel's native stability into a passable glide. At least compared to a skydiver in a squirrel suit. Hermes Mk. 2 glides at about four times the speed, however, and with the same glide ratio, the sink rate is pretty high. You won't be climbing in thermals in this, I'm afraid. From 250 m/s, however, it's capable of pulling up into a near-vertical zoom and bleeding off speed to well below 100 m/s. Sadly, from altitudes above about 160 km, it breaks up when trying to pull up sharply enough to prevent thermal failures (one winds up well above the cockpit's rating of Mach 3 when passing through 21 km, from that height). Non-fatally, so far, but it's fair to say Hermes Mk. 2 has probably finished its run. After those launches (now in mid-1964), I decided to use some of that new tech that had come in to build the next generation of the Diana line. Meet Achilles Mk. 1 -- named for an archer and runner whose name is rememered after more than thirty centuries. There's just something about a stainless steel balloon tank that says "Launch me!" And yes, this should look familiar. Air-start reliability problems? Ignite all your engines on the ground, so you can abort before destruction if there's a problem. It took me overnight to figure out why this wouldn't make orbit in sim, even without any payload at all. It's because the first generation LR-105 and LR-89 series engines it uses are the ones from the first generation SM-65 Atlas -- ICBM! it was never intended to reach orbit in this configuration, it was intended to lob a few hundred kilos (inside that tiny tank at the nose) a few thousand kilometers. The tank is sized so each engine burns its rated time: 2:15 for the boosters, and another 3:15 (total of 5:30) for the sustainer. I do have an upgrade available for each of those engines, already, though, so before this even flies outside the simulator, it'll get upgraded and tank stretched to match the version that launched Mercury. There won't be a Mercury capsule in this save for some years yet, though -- I've got multiple nodes yet to unlock, and more than a year of research time for each, before I'll have the capsule and heat shield for crewed orbit (unless I can find a way to design a spaceplane that will survive reentry from orbital velocity). Meantime, Diana Mk. 2 is based on Achilles Mk. 1, and ought to be able to toss a lightweight satellite into a sun-synchronous orbit with a very modest upper stage; Diana Mk. 3 will be based on Achilles Mk. 2 and able to make orbit without additional stages and with significant payload.

That's impressive, @Cavscout74, I wouldn't have believed even MechJeb could get that close at that kind of closure rate. It's all I can do to get the right orbit...

That would be Charles Sheffield in the stories that were collected as The McAndrew Chronicles. Combine a biggish disk of neutronium (spun at some impossible rate to keep it flattish), an elevator that can move the crew cabin closer or further from the neutronium, to always maintain 1G in the cabin, and Zero Point Energy based drives that can push the entire object (final mass like a large asteroid, maybe?) at 50-100 G continuously. Please don't attempt to land on a planet or moon...