AHHans

Picking up works the same for all deployed parts: right click on the part to open the PAW and when your Kerbal is close enough select "pick up part" in the PAW. But after that they don't disappear, but are transferred into the inventory of the Kerbal. So if your Kerbal already has something in their inventory then you cannot pick up another part.

I don't know. But in the media the Swedish way was always called the unique way, so I assume the government response to COVID-19 in these countries was essentially in line with the rest of Europe. Well, but in this case I would compare it to countries that are as similar to Sweden as possible and not to countries with known differences in climate and social behavior. The problem with doing a detailed and controlled study before implementing general policies is that in the meantime people die. So IMHO it is much better to do something that works now than implementing an optimized plan in two months or so.

Well, comparing COVID numbers of Sweden with those from Italy or France is a bit ridiculous. There is a joke that the Swedish are sick and tired of this "2m social distancing" stuff and that they want to get back to their normal distance of 5m. Nobody is going to make this joke about France or Italy! So if you want to evaluate the effect of mitigation strategies then you should compare Sweden with Norway, Finland, and Denmark. That also not 100% fair, but much better. (Just from cultural and geographical considerations I would espect Sweden to fall between Denmark and Norway/Finland.)

Well, it isn't all that surprising. The US (well, the NSF) have been trying to pull out of financing Arecibo since at least 2010 and only pressure and commitment from international partners have kept it alive so far. And with FAST being operational they even lost the bragging rights to having the biggest single dish. When I saw the pictures after the first cable snapped this year I was somewhat shocked how dirty the dish looked. While the dirt doesn't affect the operation as such, it is an indication that they are saving on maintenance. So, yes, sad but not surprised. Big single dishes and arrays of smaller telescopes have different applications. Yes, you can run an array in a "phased up" mode (in contrast to the normal interferometer mode) but the data is much more complicated to calibrate and even after calibration the data quality is just not the same. And doing things like absolute flux measurements or radar transmissions are next to impossible to do with an array.

O.K. I guess that means there is no good solution. What you could try is to use the node that would generate the shroud, remove the shroud, and then move the heatshield closer to the separator. But I don't have high hopes for that.

Have you tried moving the heatshield away from the separator in the VAB? Just enough so that their boundary boxed don't overlap.

Thanks! . o O (hmmm.... interesting...) It pitches over more aggressively than I do. (Which is not surprising, I like getting out of the atmosphere early!) What I didn't understand at first is that it doesn't throttle up after staging: apparently it doesn't know about the TWR of the stages and just keeps the throttle setting the same until the AP time decreases to the lower limit, then it increases the throttle to what is needed to keep the AP time constant. Again we see that the difference between a "perfect" gravity turn and a "meh, good enough" gravity turn is very small. So there is IMHO little use in trying to get ones strategy perfect. (In contrast a way "too flat" or way "too steep" ascent will cost you significant dV!) And as already discussed: getting of the launchpad with a too high TWR will cost you dV, either in gravity losses (too steep ascent) or in atmospheric drag (matched gravity turn that then stays too long in the lower atmosphere) or by lugging around an oversized engine that you aren't using (if you throttle down from the very beginning). Well IMHO I won(TM) if you got a better understanding how the launching a rocket works and what to look out for to improve your rockets and ascent profiles.

Hmmm... the Mun's orbital velocity is 543 m/s, so you have to enter the Mun's SOI with a relative velocity (to the Mun) larger than that to be able to get into a retrograde orbit at all. (Assuming that you can exit the Mun's SOI perfectly retrograde.) So my personal verdict is: Possible? Yes. Better than directly launching retrograde? No.

Of course I can do it better! You all are doing it wrong all the time! (*) Well, I couldn't resist, so I downloaded the craft and after some fiddling around (a skipper engine is on the weak side) got to the following: on the rocket I filled the ADPT-2-3 tank full again, but removed the two SRBs. That brought the TWR on the launchpad down to 1.66 (and is cheaper). For the launch I did (manually flown, I don't have any autopilot mod installed): start at full throttle pitch over 10 deg when it gets to 40-50 m/s set SAS to prograde when the prograde marker gets to the 10 deg (and then keep that for the full ascent until the circularization burn) throttle down as needed to keep the TWR at about 2 throttle back to full at/after staging ditch the fairing when passing 60 km altitude keep burning until the AP reaches 120 km, the coast and circularize That resulted in a significantly steeper ascent than your examples, it passes roughly through the marker of 45 deg pitch at 10 km altitude. And it had 1900 m/s dV left after circularization. @antiproI would really like to see what the Gravity Turn mod does with the craft as I suggested. (Will it be better than my ascent strategy?) So you could do me a favor and post a description (video?) of that. [Edit:] Two images, craft in VAB, and in orbit after circularization P.S. (*) Was that enough over the top to make the irony clear?

You're right, that orbit is between the orbits of the Mun and Minmus, I hadn't considered that in my other answer. Now the proposed strategy makes sense. Once caveat that this has is that setting up the Mun gravity assist is going to be really tricky. Because you'll need to get into an orbit where the AP is on (or at least close to) the plane of the target orbit. (And, yes, settling for a lower AP that is closer to the target plane is probably better than a higher AP farther away from that plane.) I personally probably wouldn't bother with a gravity assist and launch directly into an orbit that is close to the target orbit. A few hundred m/s of dV for a satellite are cheap.

. o O (Desperately trying to find a way to include a "Kerbale und Liebe" pun. But no luck so far. )

As I wrote in my other answer: the problem is not that the rocket has a problem keeping the orientation that the autopilot wants it to have, it is that in order to keep the time to apoapsis from falling to autopilot steers the rocket further up. Have a look at the thrust setting at the navball and the yaw indicator in the bottom left: while stage 6 is running the autopilot throttles down in order to not increase the time to apoapsis above 50s while still pointing prograde. After staging it first increases the throttle to max, and when that still isn't enough it yaws to the left to raise the nose and increase the time to apoapsis again.

The dV advantage of launching with the rotational speed of Kerbin is rather small (<200m/s), the biggest advantage of a launch site at the equator is that you can launch into any orbit (even a Geo- or Kerbin-stationary orbit!) without doing a plane change! So to get into a polar orbit you just launch straight North or South. To get into a specific polar orbit you need to launch at the right time, when the launchpad is in the plane of the target orbit (that's what a launch window is!). In KSP I don't know (or don't bother) to calculate the exact time for the launch, but estimate it by looking at the map screen, rotating the view so that the target orbit is displayed as a line, and then looking when the KSC is on that line. (You should also check if you need to launch North or South from that position before launch.) I don't match the orbit 100% but good enough that the plane change is not too expensive.

Your time to apoapsis (AP time) is dropping below the 50s that you told the mod to keep. So the mod points the rocket more to upward to increase the AP time. The first two stages had enough TWR to to the AP time at 50s even with this flat trajectory, but the third stage has lower TWR so it struggles to keep the AP time up. The yaw control input isn't maxed out, so it isn't a problem with aerodynamic instability.

Which could mean that parents could be protected against COVID-19 by their kids. By having endured lots of infections in the previous years that their kids "brought home" from day care or school. (As I mentioned earlier in this thread.) P.S. Yes, I'm aware, it's a theory. And it could also be the other way around. But I like the idea that parents may have a benefit from being sick all the time.

Nope! It's bigger than that!

Two points: On is that "Gimbal Lock" is usually used to describe another effect. The other is that I just did a quick&dirty test and I got the same results as @Boyster: locking the gimbals on the engine that I used to test made it not move. No matter if I set that lock in the VAB or on the launchpad. Another - somewhat far fetched - idea: do you have "toggle gimbal" on an action group somewhere?

Well, as @Snark already wrote, the short answer is that if you want to do that in one hop, then you want modded antennas. Even the fully upgraded (stock) tracking station cannot talk to itself over that distance. To have a satellite that could talk to (a copy of) itself at that distance it would need 14 RA-100 antennas on it. A satellite that could talk to a single RA-100 or Communotron 88-88 over that distance would need a strength of 4748G or 172 RA-100 antennas. (Can be done, but I question if it should be done.)

Btw. Did I mention that I think this is a nice move by @SQUAD?

Well, to be more specific, I would need to know what you actually need. So what's the maximum distance, and what antenna do you plan to put on the other side?

Not really. You should at least read the wiki page about CommNet! (Your first link.) I don't know the Outer Planets mod, what is the maximum distance that you need to cover?

Depends on what you want: do you need mostly control surface? Then the AV-R8 is better. Do you mostly need an aero-surface with just a bit of control? Then the Delta-Deluxe is better. All in all I think that you could get nearly all of the craft to work with either of them.

I rest my case.

Yea, well, I haven't done that before... How much time is there between the last maneuver of the interplanetary craft until it enters Kerbin's SOI? Would that be enough to set up the orbit of the intercepting craft? If not then you probably have to do it the way you described.

Well, you could do this contract with three completely separate craft (Although I don't know why you would want that.) But landing on ground and then rovering to the sea should work. Or you build a plane that can take off after a successful first landing. Or drop a "daughter" probe while descending.