Bluejayek

largest Minimus lander? Outer stage is completely dry, engines broke off despite landing at 0.4m/s, but hopefully it wont unbalance me too much as I try to take off.

I went for a minimus landing today with one of my craft. As I had plenty of fuel, I made a very slow descent, and landed at under 1m/s (Approximately 0.4m/s). However, even this landing speed was apparently too much for the attachment points we have in this game, and three of my outer engines broke off on landing. It seems to me that this is just a tad too weak...

Theres somebody around here who has landed on the mun with SRB\'s only, no RCS. If you dig around a bit you should be able to find it. That in my opinion is seriously impressive.

By one lander, does that mean I can\'t jettison a stage on the mun and take off to go to minimus?

How big is minimus comapred to the mun?

So how about the challenge 'Land on the Mun, then Minimus, and return safely to kerbin' challenge? Anybody done that yet?

Sign me up for the stock base. There should also be a third option for hardcore pilots who want to land without SAS or RCS thruster.s Sign me up for that too

I\'m currently in the design phase of a ship for kerbolar dives. I\'m fairly confident my current design can do it. The last one, with slightly less fuel, managed an apoapsis velocity of 1000m/s with a terrible ascent profile. Building it, I started with the minimum ship that could make it to orbit (Pod, LFT-250 LFT-500 lander engine) and set out to build a stage around it that could launch it into orbit. Then, around that I put a further stage that could launch the entire inner two stages into orbit. This means that the entire thing should have a delta v of around 15-16km/s which should be enough for what I am trying to do. I like your ship though, it seems much more streamlined then what I have Screenshot follows of what my ship looks like in orbit before jetisoning any stages. This ships a bastard to turn, but its suprisingly steady, and it is easily possible to maneurver without the ASAS.

Well.... Not entirely true. He could put a ship on the kerbin launch pad, close the game, modify the persistence file so that ship now appears on the mun, and then launch from there. Assuming you have the full game and not the trial that is.

Ok, I concede that FL-T500 is more efficient after running rough calculations myself, and I will swap them. However, I get a delta V difference of something like 30m/s between the designs, which is really rather tiny.

Try the craft file out. Its completely stock, and has an absurd delta v of OVER 9000!!!! But seriously, it is a bit rediculous. The inner stage (lander engine, Large fuel tank, small fuel tank, capsule) is capable of achieving a 70km orbit by itself (which I have done without mechjeb) http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/index.php?topic=10172.0. In fact, it is perfectly possible to orbit it, deorbit, and land it, if you conserve the fuel perfectly. You have about a teaspoon of fuel to make the landing, but done right it is enough. I have not been successful on this. My closest attempt, I jumped the gun and burned to 10m/s upwards at 100m above the ground, and my kerbals freefell to their deaths over that last 100m. The lander engines are incredibly overpowered for a lot of things. The reason is that after you get off the planet, your total thrust doesn\'t really matter very much. Rather, what matters is the total momentum you can gain for a given amount of fuel. Hence, the lander engines tiny weight (0.5 compared to 2.0 for its big brothers) really shines.

I will suggest my attached craft as a starting point. I believe it is capable of leaving kerbol orbit, but havent managed to do it myself. My record is 150 billion m apoapsis as per the attached screenshot. Maybe somebody can mechjeb it out.

I\'ve got some screenshots of one of my craft that is able to achieve Kerbolar orbit. It is very close to being able to achieve kerbol escape velocity in fact. It probably can, but I would have to do a more fuel efficient launch. You\'ll see that it really is very small. Total of 4.5 units of liquid fuel. Incidentally, this is also easily capable of making it to the mun, but landing is a real pain without landign struts, and I have not yet made a succesful landing in a state that I could take off again. A final comment I will make at this time.. To achieve orbit, it is ALWAYS most efficient to turn towards the 90 degrees marker on the navball. The reason for this is Kerbins spin. The spin on its axis gives you a bit of a boost (~200m/s iirc) which significantly reduces your fuel requirements.

Nice craft. As per aiming at moon, the moon is not a very massive body. Therefore, its SOI is very small. Further, even if you aimed directly at it when you launched, it is moving as well. By the time you get to where it was, it has probably moved out of the way, so you miss it and enter the suns SOI instead. If you are trying to launch to the moon you must take into account this motion and aim ahead of it. I find the most foolproof method is using Hohmman Transfer orbits. To do this, you first set up a circular(ish) orbit around kerbin in the same plane as the moon. Then, when you are oposite about 20 degrees ahead of the moon (the point where the moon will be when you get there) you do another burn until you are in an eliptical orbit intersecting the moons orbit. When you get there, hopefully you are in the moons SOI and can slow down to an orbit or (crash) landing. Welcome to KSP and happy flying PS: Craft file is in KSP > ships > (shipname.craft) PPS: In terms of your issue with the bottom stage being too small, it can be helpful to add a few solid boosters around it. You can set them up to fire at the same time, and they will give it the little boost it needs to leave the ground. It would make your nice ship a bit less symetrical though. Also, afaik the seconds A.S.A.S. module you have there does absolutely nothing. Deleting it would increase your performance noticeably even if it is a small portion of the total weight of your craft, simply because it is on the final stage. With some rockets, you can even get 100\'s of m/s of extra delta v by removing your parachute. This however is not recomended if you want your kerbals to survive and are not an expert pilot. Powered landings on kerbin can be very dicey.

What Tiberion said about orbital velocity is an important point. However, there are some other things I would like to clarify for you that your post indicates you may have confused. First, the 13 trillion meters you see is the distance from the star (Kerbol) not the planet where you launched. Since kerbin orbits kerbol at this distance, as soon as you break out of Kerbin\'s sphere of influence, you are at this distance from the star, so it is not too crazy to consider getting to this distance. This brings me to my next point, spheres of influence. The way gravity is coded in this game is that, instead of having the gravity from all bodies simultaneously affecting your craft, only one body will affect you at once. The body that is affecting you is determined by your distances to each body, and their relative mass. You will always be affected by the one that would have the greatest effect, ie, close to Kerbin you are in its SOI, but because Kerbol is so much heavier, once you go some distance from Kerbin you fall out of its SOI. Escape velocity: This is the velocity required to escape to infinity from a body in the absence of any other bodies gravitational pull. You can read more about it on wikipedia if you wish, but the essential point is that the further you get away, the lower the gravitational pull, so if you get moving fast enough the gravitational pull will decrease quickly enough that you just keep going. Mathematically, you can get this by comparing your kinetic energy to your gravitational potential energy. I don\'t know offhand the escape velocity of kerbin, but I believe its around 6000m/s. Further, because Kerbol exists, the velocity to break free of kerbins SOI is acually somewhat lower, as you can put yourself in a highly eliptical orbit that will leave Kerbin\'s SOI, while not breaking the escape velocity. Another point: Stating 'I only expected to go 100,000m' doesn\'t really mean much in an orbital sandbox like this. Most rockets can potentially go infinite distance, as you can set them in stable orbits and just leave them. A much more sensible statement is 'I only expected to be able to get into a 100,000m circular orbit' or 'I only expected to reach 100,000m altitude and not get into an orbit'. Finally, in order to get into orbit around kerbin, you have to actually turn over at some point. If you just thrust straight up you will either a) Reach escape velocity and begin to orbit Kerbol (As you did) or Reach some altitude and fall back to the surface. I hope this post has enlightened you somewhat, and I apologize if you knew some of this already. By the way, can you post a screenshot of your ship prelaunch, and perhaps the craft file? As per your latest post, it will be better off to just leave your brave kerbals to bask in the eternal light of the sun until their air runs out. Sacrifices are expected in such a new space program.

I disagree. It will be easily possible to reach another planet, although a higher time warp would be nice. The REAL problem is the return flight. If it is a planet that has the mun\'s gravity, it would be ok, but for another kerbin, youd need to carry a massive ammount of fuel there so you can take off again. Plenty of people (including myself) have made ships capable of entering kerbol orbit, and having enough to maneurver around. It is the docking and refueling we really need, so we can launch full tanks to the new planet and refuel out of them when your lander gets there.

Since when will the capsule burn up? A couple weeks ago (in 0.14) I hit atmosphere going over 6000 and had a g-force that should have been 100+ (didn\'t read correctly). I did not burn up. I don\'t see how you would burn up coming out at 2000 if I didn\'t burn up going in at 6000...

it would be nice if there was another control that you could tap (that does not repeat) for 0.1 or 0.5% increments of throttle. For those of us who have a hate on for RCS thrusters but still want to do fine maneurvers like rendevous.

a) Newtons are a unit of force, not pressure. What you instead want is a unit such as newtons/square meter 1 Newton is approximately the force exerted by gravity on an apple. If I have an apple sitting on my hand, it does not implode, so I have to assume if I have one newton pushing outwards it would not explode either. Now for radiation. As somebody else mentioned, there are two senses the word \'radiation\' is commonly used in scientifically. The first is as in 'Thermal Radiation'. All bodies emit radiation in the form of photons of light at all times. The amount of radiation emitted, and the wavelength of the photons, varies based on the temperature of the body. The stephan boltzman law of blackbody radiation gives: P/A = sigma * T^4 for a black body. A black body is simply a perfect emitter of radiation. Most objects are not black bodies, and so there is an extra constant in front called Emmisivity represented by Epsilon. Emissivity varies between 0, for a perfect reflector, and 1, for a perfect black body radiator. The wavelength of light emitted is a continuum, however it has a peak at lambda = b/T where b is the constant 2.9*10^-3K m (Kelvin Meters). This gives a peak wavelength of around 10 micrometers for a body radiating at room temperature. This is in the infrared and not in the visible spectrum (~0.4-0.8 micrometers is visible) which explains why you do not consantly see light emitting from everyday objects. However, if you heat something up, the wavelength will drop into the visible. This is where the expressions 'Red hot' 'White hot' 'Blue hot' come from. Each of these simply means the peak of the radiation is at that portion of the visible spectrum. White hot implies the peak is right in the middle of the visible, so you see all the visible wavelengths combined into white. Blue is even hotter, as now most of the radiation is at the very low wavelengths. Now, you might ask, if all materials are constantly emitting radiation, why don\'t they simply shed all of their energy and cool down to absolute zero? Good question. This is because everything else is also emitting radiation. For an environment in equilibrium, they are all emitting the same radiation. Each of the bodies then absorbs the radiation the others emit, keeping everything at a constant temperature. However, if there is a temperature differential between two radiating objects, there is a net energy transfer. To find the rate of energy transfer, you simply take the difference between the energy input, and the energy output. Power/area in = epsilon * sigma * Tsurroundings4 Power/area out = epsilon * sigma * Tobject4 Net power/area = epsilon * sigma * (Tsurroundings4 - Tobject4) The temperature quoted for space, 3K = -270C, is given by the radiation temperature of the cosmic microwave background. It\'s a microwave background because the wavelength is rather large, owing to the low temperature. Wavelengths are simply a form of electromagnetic radiation that has a low energy and hence a relatively long wavelength, 1mm-1m. However, if you are currently being illuminated by a star, the local temperature will be much higher because the radiation from the star is clearly much more energetic then the microwave background. This is why keeping cool is often more of a problem then keeping warm; the energy in from the star is much more then the energy that you radiate out. Having dealt with thermal radiation, let us move on to the other sense that the word is used. This is as in 'ionizing radiation'. This is the sort of radiation that can cause cancer. The term 'Ionizing' simply means that the radiation has enough energy to ionize an atom, which means to knock an electron off the atom. Electrons are bound to atoms by electric fields from the opposite charge of the electron and the positive nucleus of an atom. The binding energy varies between atoms, depending on which electron you are looking at, and how big the nucleus is. Electrons in higher shells (further out) tend to be more weakly bound then those closer in, as would be expected. However, a good average value for the binding energy of the outermost electron in atoms is -10eV. This means you require 10eV of energy to knock that electron out. Now, 10eV (electron volts) of energy is not very much, that is 1.6*10^-18 Joules or 4.5 * 10^-25 kilowatt hours, to quote some units you may be familiar with. However, the important thing here comes from quantum mechanics. Electrons will only absorb energy in specific bits called quanta, and that quanta must be large enough on its own to knock the electron out. You cannot keep shooting less energy quanta of light (called photons) at the electron until you have given it enough energy to leave, they simply wont eb absorbed and the electron will carry on. You must fire a photon that has an energy greater then 10eV to knock that electron off. The energy of a photon of light is given by its wavelength through the relationship hc/lambda where h is plancks constant, 6.6 x 10^-34 m^2 kg/ s, c is the speed of light in a vacuum, 3 * 10^8 m/s, and lambda is the wavelength. This gives a wavelength of around 120nm to ionize atoms. This is called ultraviolet radiation, which is why it is recommended you do not use tanning beds, and wear sunscreen, as both the Sun and tanning beds emit UV radiation. Recall microwave radiation, such as used in cell phones, has a wavelength of above 1mm, and thus is far, far below the energy that can ionize atoms. However, it does heat water up as you see in a microwave, and since your brain is mostly water, shooting microwaves at it all day is likely not particularly great for it. However, ultraviolet radiation only has enough energy to ionize a single atom, which isnt so bad. Higher energy forms of radiation, such as x-rays or gamma rays, can ionize many more atoms before their energy is used up, making them more dangerous. Fortunately, they also tend to be much rarer. While ultraviolet can be produced through black body radiation by objects at a few thousand degrees, it would take an object sitting at millions of degrees Kelvin to emit Xrays such as those seen in medical equipment. Fortunately, such objects are extremely rare, and backgrounds like these are not a problem. Practically, X-rays in diagonostic equipment are produced by another process. This is where an electron is accelerated very quickly at a target material. When the electron hits the target and slows down, the slowing down causes an emission of Bremstrahlung radiation, which simply means 'Braking radiation' in german. This radiation is high energy, and so is called X-rays. These are used as the higher energy radiation, the further it can penetrate through objects. Therefore, X-rays can penetrate through you, but less so through bones. This gives the contrast that you see on medical X-rays. Gamma rays, some of the highest energy electromagnetic radiation, are produced by nuclear processes. They are emitted when the nuceleons (protons and neutrons) in the nucleus of an atom rearrange themselves following the emission of some other sort of radiation such as alpha or beta particles. This energy is very high energy because the energy differences inside the nucleus of the atom are very high. Therefore, gammas rays are very penetrating (can only be stopped by meters of lead), and have the potential to ionize many, many atoms. The other two types of radiation I just mentioned, alpha and beta particles, are also emitted in nuclear processes. Alpha particles are a helium 4 nucleus, with 2 protons and 2 neutrons, emitted from an atom with an energy of around 5MeV (varies by decay). These particles are relatively large, and charges, so they interact readily with matter. This makes them easy to absorb, and they can be stopped by a thin absorber such as a thin sheet of plastic. Beta particles are electrons that are emitted in nuclear process with energies ranging from a few 100 keV to several MeV. They are intermediatly penetrating, to stop them you need a thick sheet of plastic or a thin sheet of aluminum. The most important thing to realize about these sources of nuclear radiation is that they emit isotropically in all directions. That means that as you move away, the radiation intensity drops as 1/R^2. If you are 10m away, you get 100x less radiation then if you are 1m away. So, moral of the story, the best protection is distance. The concern about ionizing radiation in generl is DNA mutation, and interference with other cellular process. If you knock an electron off of an atom in a DNA molecule, you will disrupt the bond, possibly causing one of the DNA bases to be removed, introducing a mutation. Other process can also be interfered with when certain key bonds are broken down, which is why in general ionization radiation is not a good thing. Anyways, I hope that none of you read this, as you probably will have gotten bored, fallen asleep at your desk, and then gotten brain damage as your head fell to impact your desk, and I would not want that on my conscience. Cheers.

What are peoples obsession with war in space? With a proper physics simulator, like KSP is, it really just would not work. Space is too big. Impossible to intercept a craft that is actively trying to avoid you.

There is really a lot of snobism in this thread. 'I learned to use these controls, therefore you can and are just a noob for not being able to control your ship!' (Paraphrased). This really shouldn\'t be the way we welcome new players if we want KSP to grow. The truth is, for many purposes the current navigation system is inadequate, or at least can be improved. It is very good for reaching orbit, and orbit changes, but it is no good for rendevous, as people have mentioned. Something needs to be added to make this easier especially with proper docking coming soon.

Image isnt showing unless I copy the URL. Either way, I wasn\'t suggested changing the controls. They work great. It is simply a matter of knowing which way is pitch/yaw as you look at the craft in space. A light on port and starboard side to show you left/right yaw would allow this. I would however like a docking display, that would be great. However, a simple way to show that I think would be a prograde/retrograde marker on our existing navball of your motion relative to the object you are docking at (Replacing orbital prograde/retrograde when you toggle to docking mode on the selected object).

I made this same post when I was starting out. Nice to see I am not alone. Everybody is correct, the navball is really much better for all orbital maneurvers, but it is nice for new players to be able to see that the craft turns the way they want it to in the space view! Also, the navball tends to be of very limited use when trying to close that last 400m in orbital rendevous. A simple port/starboard nav light as the poster above me has suggested would be unobtrusive, helpful, and sensible.

RCS thrusters for moon landings are for wimps. The proper way is rotating your entire craft to kill horizontal velocity! Welcome to the forums! That ship seems similar in mass to my lunar ship, albit much higher. I tend to build stocky and low rather then spindly and high.

Even now, for sun dives I wish we had about another factor of 10 for maximum time warp. Hopefully they add that when we get new planets.