jonny

I was very busy the last weeks. Working hard to get my dV requirement down. But unfortunately I was not patient enough. I ended up using 203 m/s more dV than last time (including 600 m/s EVA propellant). But I made major changes to my rocket. I got the cost down to 15,780 Founds and the mass down to 39.846 t. The short Story: LKO -> Eve -> 2x Kerbin -> Jool -> 2x Eve -> Jool -> Rerosolar -> 4x Eve -> Separation between "Chair on Engine" and capsule -> 7x Kerbin -> Burberry going EVA -> rendezvous between "Chair on Engine" and Burberry -> 5x Kerbin -> rendezvous between Burberry and capsule -> 3x Eve -> Jool -> Kerbin Aerobraking and splashdown dV from LKO: 1326 m/s -> Separation between "Chair on Engine" and capsule -> 1324 m/s + 600 m/s EVA -> rendezvous between "Chair on Engine" and Burberry -> 1435 m/s -> rendezvous between Burberry and capsule -> 737 m/s -> splashdown The Long Story:

Did you ever try something like this: To be honest I didn't try that aerobraking without ablator. but I bet I hadn't survived without ablator. However, a ablative fairing sounds like a really good idea. I will try @steuben's solution and see if it need some balance BTW: the screenshot is from my entry to "The Retro Solar Rescue"

I think this one was mine: But I guess this thread should be moved to KSP Discussions

nope, K-E-K-K-J-E -> To infinity. Okay, you don't want to go to Infinity, but you have the possibility. Which means you can set up the last Eve assist, however you like, to get a Ap which suits your need. The big advantage is the low Pe. (below Eve) that means you don't need a very high Ap to flip the Orbit.

@Physics Student do you agree with this? go ahead and cheat a vessel in low Jool orbit. now try to create a maneuver which ejects you to a "good" orbit with >4000m/s (I think 4800m/s is realistic) at SOI exit.

@ManEatingApe Congratulations! That was a very interesting Mission Profile. one small suggestion, how you could cut the Mission time in half, (or just double it): go from Jool back to Eve. the gravity assist is very easy to set up, because Eve has a very short orbital period. Eve is capable to kick out your Ap to infinity, but your Pe will always stay below Eve. How could I’ve been, I did never really understand why and how gravity-assists work. I just had the “aha! moment” when I thought about @ManEatingApe's last entry, and why nobody is able to get a “good” second orbital flip at Jool. The answer is very simpel: it is Impossible. So let’s start with a very simple and obvious fact which I never considered: the velocity in reference to the celestial body which you use for the assist. Is at SOI entry and exit equal. This is because you spend the same time before and after Pe. But the celestial body will change the direction of this velocity. In theory, If the orbital velocity of the celestial body is zero, you could think of the gravity assist as an engine burn in any perpendicular direction to your velocity vector (in reference to Kerbol). Okay, the velocity of a celestial body is obviously never 0. That means you will almost ever increase or reduce your orbital velocity (in reference to Kerbol). To be precise you will add velocity in the prograde direction of the celestial body if your Pe is above the retrograde facing hemisphere. Enough theory, let’s think about the first orbital flip at Jool. The target is a Retrosolar orbit that means we have to leave Jool SOI in a retrograde direction (in reference to Kerbol) with a velocity higher than Jool’s orbital velocity (~4000m/s). --> We have to enter Jool SOI with a velocity > 4000m/s. Coming from Kerbin that is straight out to infinity. Now we have to change the direction of that velocity --> we have to place the Pe somewhere above the Prograde facing hemisphere. As we are outwards bound that would be somewhere between prograde and radial out (from jool's point of view). For the second flip we will always enter Jool SOI with >4000m/s --> if we leave Jool SOI in Prograde direction, that would add ~4000m/s (Jool's orbital velocity) --> more than 8000m/s at Pe at a hight of Jool... I think everybody can imagine how that orbit would look like. Unless you encounter a moon of Jool, or you do a aerobraking maneuver, you will always end up leaving Jool SOI with >4000 m/s. Which is never a good speed to get a "good" Prograde orbit. PS.: Please tell me if I made a mistake, because I am not the best in English and I'm not a physics Student .

Why didn't I read your entry carefully? Great idea!! I think I have to do the mission again, and save some time and fuel while performing EVA gravity assists in parallel to the rescue vehicle. I wonder if I can pull this off. Yes, pretty much like that. The biggest problem is that the close approach marker sometimes don't appear. Placing some more maneuver nodes can help. You always want to check, that you don't mess up your inclination, and to get the timing right. Precise Node is a must have, as you have to account for every mm/s. I sometimes place a maneuver with 0.001m/s --> make sure to set the thrust limiter to 0.5 and, as always: mod+F5 is your best friend.

I think the key is not the velocity but the vector. if you intercept Jool exactly at Ap you would have to flip your vector 180°. But if you intercept Jool before or after Ap you don't have to change your vector that much. --> higher Jool Pe --> less energy to kill later. I didn't find a way to get a second flip without a hyperbolic Kerbol trajectory, and the timing for the Kerbin "Aerobreak-Assisted-Gravity-Assist" (I did try to compose a German word, but i can only think in english about space stuff.) was pure luck. I think it was the best solution. Okay, I could have burned the 3000m/s left in the tank.

Burberry Kerman splashed down in the ocean tonight!! After mastering the art of gravity assists, KSC was able to pull off a 103 years and 294 day long mission to rescue him. They even could have left a entire stage with a Kerbodyne S3-7200 tank (2944 m/s) at home. The short story: dV: 5219 m/s Mission time: 103y 294d 05:36 Route: LKO - Eve - 2x Kerbin - Jool - 2x Eve - Jool - Retrosolar - 2x Eve - 9x Kerbin - Rendezvous - 4x Kerbin - 7x Eve - Jool - Prograde - Kerbin (Aerobraking) - Kerbin The long story: I will post the pictures tomorrow. Done

that route sound similar to my plan. yesterday i came that far:

I don't think it is open source, as that would mean Squad could make optimization to the engine it self. But I don't think they have access to the source code itself. Which is exactly the problem they can't optimize the engine for KSP. They can only optimize their own code.

That challenge sound great. I think I will go the long route and use minimum deltaV. Hopefully I will get some good gravity assists.

The last week I designed my KSS STS 5-8: http://imgur.com/a/IVpQQ

I wonder which badge you mean. I just realized my entry was not valid because the doomed shuttle was suborbital. I think a Sub Orbital rendezvous is challenging enough and could be a alternative for the inclination of 25-30 degrees for the Commander Rank

Today my Kerbals deployed their new deep space telescope. The first image was so magnificent, Corski Kerman totally forgot to cut the throttle during a Mun return burn. He stranded the Kerbal training mission STS 4 , on a suborbital mun return trajectory. The 7 Kerbals on STS 4 had much luck because Bob managed to strap the Space truck on a experimental first stage for a new cargo rocket. Thanks to Bob and Jeb, all the Kerbals survived the training mission.

I was thinking about the following suggestion as a mod first, but then I realized that it would have a huge impact on the "Making History" expansion because it provides the ability to organize the space program. Nevertheless, I think it should be part of the core game as it can be utilized by many Mods. I would like to see a new class or namespace (I'm not so familiar with C# yet) which provides functions to assign vessels to groups and organize those groups. The groups should provide functions to alter the behavior of their members. E.g. change "load distance" and "pack distance", alter the color of the "patched conics", prevent any interaction with the vessel (for rescue missions), hide vessel Markers,... A UI to use the groups can be implemented in the Mission builder of "Making History" and the tracking station. By the way "Tracking Station" should be called "Mission Control" To provide a competitive "role play" gameplay style these groups could be organized in a tree structure. Any specified behavior will override the behavior specified in the parent group. And those groups could keep track of Kerbals, contracts, funds,... implement commnet restrictions between groups (No science over foreign networks) I would like to know what other modders think about this suggestion and maybe you could provide more ideas to improve the suggestion.

Brauch man nicht aber dann versteht dich keiner! What did I say?

As the maneuver node system is a core element of KSP I think there can be some improvements: Currently the system gives very minor information about a planned maneuver there is the direction indicator on the navball which is only useful to align the vessel, but not really for planning, the dV required which again is only useful for execution of the maneuver. The only information for planning a maneuver is the resulting orbit. A very useful feature would be a dV readout for each standard direction (prograde, normal, ...) e.g. hovering with the mouse over the "radial in" handle will show the dV in "radial in" direction, like hovering with the mouse over Ap maker shows the Ap height. And there should be an visualization of the vectors in each of the standard directions. I think of arrows which scale in size depending on the dV in the particular direction. e.g. a maneuver with 30m/s "retrograde" and 60m/s "normal" creates a "retrograde" arrow and a "normal" arrow which is double the size of the retrograde one: I think this will even help beginners to understand what the maneuver system does. And it will show if you are wasting dV because you accidentally dragged the wrong handle. Of course a 5 m/s normal vector would be barely visible if the prograde vector is 1000 m/s. But this is ok because the 5 m/s normal vector would have a very small impact on the resulting orbit and dV requirement.

I would say it is the capture vehicle which is on a escape trajectory: ... in order to reach the target before reentry. with some better timing this should be possible with way less dV.

This is a great Suggestion. It would make flying in the atmosphere a lot easier. But there have to be a toggle to switch the SAS mode, because it would not work in vacuum. (you would pick up infinite rotation).

@nuclear_turkey I like the idea of this challenge, but you should add some rules: I didn't watch your video because i have very poor Internet Connection. -is it ok to utilize glitches such as landing leg catapults or timewarp inside the atmosphere? Maybe create a extra ranking. (I really hate to see a Kerbal impacting Kerbin with 20 m/s and survive.) -do we have to capture mun Orbit? If then, you should add maximum height restrictions because a high elliptic Mun orbit can save a lot deltaV. -what about Mun landing and return? I would really like to try the challenge, but those rules have to be clear first.

Hold my beer for the monopropellant one. 100% stock? maybe. Mods: Planetshine KER RCS Build Aid KAC PreciseNode The OP should give some information about those mods which don't alter physics, add parts or provide a autopilot. I will not create a new challenge, this is up to @SpacePilotMax. Or should I? I think it could be funny to choose between 2 different missions, or have an alternative if the first is reserved. However, I will wait until a decision from the OP.

And here we go: I managed to land the fuel pod: The delta wings on the engine tug do a very good job adjusting the CoL as you can see below The plan is to keep the main craft as it is and change to the engine tug to fit my needs.

Thank you very much. I had a hard time getting the CoM and CoL right in all configurations, but it works fine for STS 1B and STS 2A, which I already uploaded: However, I will land the fuel pod with my slightly reworked SpaceTruck v2 this evening. Reentry will be very funny, because I parked it at an orbit even higher than the Mun. Edit: I added Kerbal Alarm Clock to my mod-list.

I solved the problem. Because .NET 3.5 shares many libaries with .NET 2.0 I had to install mono-reference-assemblies-2.0 and *-3.5. I'm not sure why this is not listed as a dependency of mono-reference-assemblies-3.5 but it worked just fine.