jimmymcgoochie

The first launch of an OR-2A Rehoboam-L (for Lunar) went, uh... A quick revert while still on the pad and it was fine second time around. I might switch launchpads, this sort of thing is happening a lot with this one. The design for this mission is based on one I used for It's Only Rocket Science, however the more stringent limitations of Payloads and Launch Complexes meant that I had to ruthlessly cut excess weight to get it into orbit. Science? Bare minimum. Avionics? Only controllable when the fuel is depleted for course corrections. Margins? What margins? With a 40 second total burn time on the upper stage, shutting the engine off at the right time by eye wasn't easy, but that's what the RCS is for. Success! However, it wasn't perfect- the mass spectrometer and thermometer experiments didn't work because they were "shrouded", meaning a significant amount of science was missed. I might not have beaten Luna 1 to the Moon, but at least I hit it first time- and six months ahead of real life. 75 applicants mean 75 extra engineers and researchers for free, enough to max out LC-60 and add a large contingent to R&D. A few months later, Rehoboam-L 002 followed in its predecessor's footsteps. A small design change will allow all the science experiments to run this time. And to finish, a boring old communications satellite. Bad news: I can only build three more rockets before the constellation Program runs out of time. Good news: I have discovered that I can launch two satellites on a single Rehoboam to complete the 4 sat network contract with time to spare. There are actually three of them on the build queue in case of a failure, because at some point TestFlight is going to notice that the second stage engines can't fail and will break something else out of spite. Next time: No updates until 2023, but lunar orbiters when I return.

Whoops, I forgot to post two whole Imgur albums' worth of stuff... Still, better late than never! A design-heavy update first as I experimented with a modular lunar space station that would host reusable landers as well as the fuel tankers required to run them and crews to use them. Getting all this stuff out to the Moon won't be easy- or cheap!- but it'll provide an ideal way to explore the Moon or visit a surface base. And now for a reusable spaceplane to serve as an upper stage for launching small payloads. As a plane, it was... ...surprisingly successful, actually, with decent stability, a reasonable landing speed and no explosions during testing. Trying to put the "space" part of "spaceplane" into it proved rather less successful: Despite what the part descriptions might say, those shielded fuel tanks were completely unable to take the heat of re-entry and even the most heatproof RCS stood no chance. How about a reusable first stage then? That didn't work either, and most of the tests I did went resulted in the entire booster being destroyed on splashdown. Enough simulating, time for a real launch instead! Green Basalt 1 is the first next-generation rover heading to the Moon, with others due to head out there in due course. While that was heading to the Moon, course corrections came up for the Violet Hydrogen and Violet Helium missions to Mercury, which are still on track to reach their goals. Meanwhile, Green Satsuma approached the magic disappearing rock. Keep an eye on that tiny white speck just off the end of the upper left solar panel, just above the Earth. Now spot the tiny white speck near the bottom of the asteroid- that's the probe! Asteroid "landing" successful, though I wonder just how big an avionics unit I'd need to make almost 3 gigatons of asteroid controllable... This contract glitched and paid out a while ago, hence no contract reward now. Now the launch of Green Radish 2 to Venus, which waited for a "more efficient" window that TWP insisted was coming (it lied). One last sim, this time a tiny lightweight D-2 capsule with no mission module for absolute cheapness in LEO operations. This actually worked rather well. And after all that, Green Basalt 1 arrived at the Moon and parked in orbit until the near side was in daylight for its landing. Coming soon: a hiatus of a few weeks, as I'll be KSP-less until 2023.

How I would do it: Land probe on Ike, facing Duna, with relay dishes. Use cheats to complete contract- if Ike is in a stationary orbit over that point and you put a probe on Ike, technically the probe is in a stationary orbit over that point. You also get science from Ike’s surface!

Some combination of the below are likely to be playing at least some part in your troubles: Centre of Mass behind Centre of Lift. This is unstable as the drag produced by the wings will slow the front end down more while the greater weight at the back will have more inertia and won’t slow down as much so it’ll pivot around quite readily. Many a rear-engined car has had the same issue as the heavy engine in the back made it very unstable and prone to spinning, but for a plane the issue is compounded by being able to spin vertically as well as horizontally and the addition of aerodynamic forces that will make the draggy end go to the back. Look at a dart: the weight is at the front and the fins (drag) are at the back, giving it the stability needed to fly straight. To fix this, shift fuel tanks forwards and tweak the tank priorities so the aircraft remains balanced as fuel is burnt. Centre of mass too far back. Even if your CoM is behind the CoL, if it’s just too near the tail then as you pitch up the fuselage itself will produce significant drag; the nose slows down, the heavy tail keeps on going (often aided by lots of thrust) and the result is predictably explosive. Shift that CoM towards the centre of the craft, adjusting the wings as necessary so it’s still stable. Centre of thrust too low. If all your engines are under the wings then that’ll add a significant torque force to the plane when at full power, as you are at takeoff. If this force is great enough and/or combined with the control surfaces trying to pitch up to take off, the result can be a sudden pitch up that the controls just can’t counteract in time, if at all. Try to keep the centre of thrust in line with the centre of mass if possible; mounting engines in pairs above and below the wings can help, as can putting them on the back of the plane. No angle of attack on the wings. KSP wings only generate lift if they’re angled to the airflow so they need a positive angle of attack (front edge higher than back edge) to produce any lift. If you angle your wings a few degrees with the rotate tool- turn angle snap off!- and/or position your landing gear so the nose is higher than the tail on the runway, you can produce enough lift in some cases to lift right off the ground without even needing to apply any pitch input at all, though for larger planes it’s more of a helping hand along with the pitch controls. A set of front canards (any control surface at the front, not the specific canard parts) can help you get more lift at the front to lift off the runway too. Without seeing the plane in question that’s as much advice as I can give you. The centre of mass/lift/thrust overlays are toggleable using the buttons in the bottom left of the editor- mass is yellow, lift blue and thrust purple.

The first real OR-2 Rehoboam launch is a simple communications satellite with a solid third stage to boost it up to the required orbit. No avionics control on the upper stage and no trajectory planning means the second stage has to reorient itself to point retrograde immediately after reaching orbit so the upper stage is pointing in approximately the right direction for the apoapsis kick. The second launch followed a similar pattern, only in this case the second stage remained attached to provide ullaging for the U-2000 third stage, required due to the greater payload mass and precision of this contract. With the launch rocket proving itself, I took a look at some old early lunar missions I used in It's Only Rocket Science and adapted one to work with the extra limitations of Payloads and Launch Complexes as well as the capabilities of the Rehoboam and the available tech. Squeezing an RD-0105 third stage into one ton of overall mass to orbit wasn't easy and the avionics for the upper stage can only control it after it burns its fuel, but the result is a design that can definitely hit the Moon- as soon as I can actually aim, that is! Without patched conics this Moonshot missed by about 60Mm, but it has the delta-V to get there and the RCS system can correct an inaccurate TLI burn; with a burn time of just 40 seconds to give over 3km/s delta-V, that upper stage will be accelerating hard and so a split second could be the difference between an impact and missing the Moon entirely. Tooling costs aren't terrible, the RD-0105 is a bit pricey but magic subsidy will cover the entire cost. Next time: Throwing probes at the Moon!

Deadly Re-entry is no longer required for RSS/RO/RP-1 and last I heard you're recommended not to use it.

Sounds like an exception in the loading process is causing the game to stop loading, however the loading screens and tips are separate to that so they'll just keep on going even when the game will never load. If you got KSP via Steam, verify the game files (right click KSP in Steam > properties > local files) and if that doesn't fix it or you didn't get KSP via Steam, back up your save games and then uninstall and reinstall KSP.

You were 0.6% away from that Astris not lighting at all! Get rid of it! An AJ10-Advanced or similar would be a much better choice, or just a cluster of 2kN generic thrusters and enough RCS to balance any asymmetric thrust. Also PVG is better suited to atmospheric ascents, whereas where you landed would have worked as a direct ascent to a return trajectory; less efficient but faster, point up and keep going until the trajectory hits Earth’s atmosphere. That Saturn probe is exactly the sort of mission you want to keep going as long as possible- as many flybys as you can get out of it for maximal science and then crash it into the atmosphere when the fuel runs out. While the velocity of Discovery 14 is probably too high to survive an encounter, Titan is a pretty benign place to aerobrake and land due to the relatively thick atmosphere and low gravity, though the very high upper edge of the atmosphere mean it takes a while to get down to the surface. Well worth sending a dedicated mission.

Does your mouse wheel work when not using KSP? Check the control bindings in the main menu settings are still set?

Perhaps a certain something resembling Saturn's moon Mimas? these are not the plans you're looking for...

Try saving and then reloading? If that doesn’t work, drive away until the randolith is outside physics range (2.5km) and then save and reload, then drive back.

Any aerodynamic surface will provide a braking force when deployed. Using large control surfaces as airbrakes is more effective and by doubling up their functions (control and braking) you get two parts in one. Just make sure that you don’t set all your surfaces to deploy in the same direction as this can cause major control/stability issues, set some to deploy up and others down to balance the forces.

I suspect that’s a mistake in the contract text, it should probably be “have an engineer on the station”.

Could be related to the drive you’ve put KSP on, maybe it’s getting full or needs defragmenting? Check the game logs to see if a mod is causing issues, maybe because of an update that isn’t playing nicely with other mods.

This wasn’t your typical rocket launch. Under normal circumstances such things are planned munths in advance, the crews trained exhaustively for the mission and the rocket itself checked and rechecked for any flaws that could result in a mission failure and expensive (but very pretty) fiery explosions. Not this time: this was a pedal-to-the-metal scramble to stack any parts they could get hold of and get it airborne as fast as possible, Kraken take the consequences. The overtime costs would be astronomical, but that was someone else’s problem. Someone else in this case meaning eccentric billionaire Jonbald Kerman who at this very moment was sitting on the Mun along with the rest of the crew of his privately funded landing mission, trying to make the space toilet work when tilted on its side and halfway up the wall to boot. Their lander- the Penumbral Sunrise- had toppled on touchdown, a victim of a top-heavy design and a crater wall that was that little bit too steep. Oddly enough, despite this issue, Jonbald was absolutely adamant that they didn’t need a rescue mission, merely a winch or hydraulic piston to right the stricken lander before they flew it back to Kerbin. Jonbald was either oblivious to the potential dangers of his plan or just trying to handwave them away through sheer force of personality, but in any case the KSC was all hands on deck to build and launch the necessary lander-pointer-upper before the Penumbral Sunrise’s supplies ran out and doomed its crew. Jeswell was one of many working through the night to get the rescue rocket ready for launch, perched on top of the launch escape tower to check the abort systems were ready. “Trigger abort key one,” she said into her walkie-talkie. “Abort key one, on.” Replied Desford in Mission Control. A green light appeared on the panel in front of Jeswell. “Abort key one checks out. Safe abort key one and trigger abort key two- in that order! I don’t want to get launched off the top of this thing.” The light went out. “Abort key one safe, triggering abort key two… now.” Another green light on the panel. “Safe abort jey two, trigger abort key three.” A third green light followed. “Abort system test complete, safe abort key three.” “Abort key three safe.” The light flickered but didn’t go out. “I said safe abort key three, Desford.” “Abort key three is safe and out of the console.” “Then why is the light still on on this panel?” “That thing’s been sat in a warehouse somewhere for years gathering dust and you’re wondering why it’s a bit glitchy? Give it a bit of percussive maintenance, that usually fixes these things.” She gave the recalcitrant panel a hefty thwack with her fist and the offending light went out. “I think we should report this anyway.” “For what? A faulty light? Everything looked good on this end, plus by the time we rip all the wiring out and check it they’ll be long dead up there.” “I don’t know…” “I don’t like pulling rank, but in this case I’m overriding your concerns. We’re good to go; move on to the solar panel latches.” “Copy that.” Jeswell was uneasy, but Desford sounded stressed like everyone else and happened to be her manager so now was not the time to argue a lost cause. **** The launch window opened, the crew of three ready to ride into the sky to save their private sector counterparts. The old Mun lander *should* be able to winch the Penumbral Sunrise back to vertical if it landed in the right place, and if the structure could take the strain, and if any number of other things worked exactly according to the back-of-a-napkin plan. The launch itself was a dazzling spectacle, the hodgepodge of different launch vehicles somehow holding together as it roared skywards. Everyone in Mission Control and millions worldwide watched with bated breath as the launch progressed. “We’re through max Q, booster separation in ten seconds.” “Flight, Booster, I’ve got a pump overspeed in engine three.” Moments later, engine 3 exploded, torn apart as its turbopump failed. The explosion damaged engines 2 and 4 and caused the solid booster mounted on that side of the rocket to break free at the bottom, wobbling back and forth alarmingly as the two remaining attachment points strained under the load. “Sitrep!” Shouted Bobak from the Big Chair. “Booster, engine 3 out, engine 2 hydraulic leak, gimbal auto-locked. Recommend separating solid motors.” “Guidance, trajectory is deviating.” “Pilot, requesting manual flight control.” “Booster, Flight, separate solid motors.” “Capcom, that’s a negative, Jeb.” “Booster, solids away.” The loose booster and its counterpart on the other side were cut loose, racing ahead and away from the struggling rocket. “Guidance, Flight, go/no-go for orbit?” “Guidance, we are still go. Suggest dumping RCS propellant from stage 3 once in orbit.” “Pilot, we’re getting a nasty shimmy up here.” “Booster, pogo alarm. MechJeb recommends abort.” “Pilot, real Jeb says proceed. We’ll get up there if I have to get out and push us into orbit.” “Flight, poll for abort.” The big screen switched from a ground tracking shot of the rocket to a simple graphic with ABORT in big red letters and three black circles. “Booster, loss of thrust in engine four, pogo worsening. Recommend abort.” One circle turned green as the Booster Officer turned his abort key. “RSO, abort modes four and five are available.” The Range Safety Officer turned her key and the second circle turned green. “Guidance, negative. Trajectory is still recoverable.” The Guidance Officer’s key stayed in the safe position. “Flight, no-go on abort. Find a way to-” The third circle turned green. The crew in the capsule felt like their eyes were about to hit the backs of their helmets as the escape tower fired, wrenching the capsule away to safety as strategically placed explosive charges detonated throughout the booster, destroying it completely in a huge shower of fire, smoke and wreckage. The Guidance Officer stared uncomprehendingly at the panel in front of him, the green abort light lit despite the key clearly still being in the safe position. **** It wasn’t a lack of food, water or oxygen that killed the crew of the Penumbral Shadow. With no hope of rescue, Jonbald decided that they would just have to push their lander around so it was pointing uphill, use the landing legs to bounce the nose up and then gun the engine at full power to try and clear the crater rim. Despite having no proper equipment to work with, somehow the crew managed to drag the spacecraft around, detach the legs and reattach them ready for “Operation Leapfrog” before strapping themselves in for their only remaining chance of getting home. The legs functioned perfectly, propelling the spacecraft’s nose up for launch, but when the engine fired it kept on pitching up until it did a backflip and pointed back down at the ground, slamming into the surface at unsurvivable speed. When the nose was bounced up, the entire weight of the lander had been pushed onto the engine at the back, pushing the engine gimbal all the way over to pitch up and jamming it there. The public inquiry into the failure of the rescue mission uncovered a devastating truth: the faulty panel on the capsule that had caused the entire incident had been wired incorrectly; simply removing the panel would have immediately revealed this mistake, while fixing it would take less than a minute. This led to the development of what became known as the Bobak Doctrine- “less haste, more speed”- that was adopted by a wide variety of organisations and companies worldwide. A number of KSC employees including Desford were fired for gross misconduct in the wake of the inquiry, while Jeswell quit her job and become a nun with the Order of the Monoliths, crushed by the guilt of knowing that had she followed her instincts and stood up to her boss, those poor souls on the Penumbral Sunrise would probably have made it back alive.

With enough tech to at least look at a lunar impactor, I threw one together to give it a test- and immediately ran into the problem of no patched conics until the Tracking Station is upgraded. Maybe I can eyeball this unguided TLI burn? ...nope. With many construction projects going at once, I put a few Jeroboams together to get extra science. Jeroboam 5 was first, aiming for sun-synchronous orbit. And then, because evidently this save was feeling left out after I ignored it for a while, the first stage engine failed 15 seconds before MECO, scuppering the ullage on stage 2 and causing those engines to fail as well. With the last of the Program money for Early Satellites paying out, I switched to the short but potentially easy Communications Network Program which will need either four Rehoboam launches, or one really big one. Jeroboam 6 was a copy of 5 and it too suffered a first stage failure, but this time only a second before MECO so the second stage was able to light successfully and proceed to orbit. It should net a nice little haul of science, eventually- tech level 0 communications are terrible. Jeroboam 7 was the last of the series and the last launch from LC-30, throwing a bio sample capsule to high altitude over the ocean. Pay no attention to the "Missing Cat" posters around Cape Canaveral, they were there already... Hey, look! We found that missing cat! How did that get there- what do you mean, "it was taller than that before"? With that launch done and LC-60 mere days from completion, LC-30 was closed down and dismantled. The engineers got a nice week off before starting back on the new LC, building bigger and better rockets than ever before! A few simulations of Rehoboam-based missions followed: Returning the empty capsule? Easy. Returning the capsule with 100kg of film (simulated with lead ballast stuffed inside it)? Incinerated at 60km altitude. It took adding a second heatshield (which melted) to take enough heat that the capsule itself could survive. Final scores: Most construction projects are running at a snail's pace to ensure there's enough money to unlock the ridiculously expensive RD-108 when that node is done as well as keep the Tracking Station upgrade moving fast enough to complete lunar missions in the not too distant future. The first Rehoboam was actually completed without the RD-108 attached, requiring a lengthy refit time to plumb it in but keeping the LC productive while the lab caught up. 1958 Orbital Rocketry contains the RD-0105, the best upper stage available at this era by some margin even if the verniers are puny. With that, lunar missions are on the cards for sure.

Don't install mods in the Steam copy of KSP- especially a modpack as large as RO/RP-1. Steam will almost inevitably corrupt something resulting in a weird failure of some sort like you're getting. The simplest solution is to not put mods in the Steam copy of KSP: Uninstall all mods from KSP so that GameData contains only Squad and SquadExpansion (if you have either/both DLCs) and nothing else. Right click KSP in Steam library > browse local files. Copy KSP/saves/<your save name> and paste that on the desktop. If you used CKAN to install your mods (and you should!), click File > export modpack and save that to your desktop too. Screenshot your GameData folder with mods installed (even if you use CKAN) so you can check that you’ve reinstalled them all later. Uninstall all mods from KSP. Right click KSP in Steam library > properties, disable Steam cloud. Completely uninstall KSP through Steam. Reinstall KSP through Steam, right click > Properties > local files > verify integrity of game files. If you want to play a version other than the current release (1.12.4), pick that version in the Betas tab and verify the files once Steam has installed that version. Run KSP and make sure it loads properly without mods. Browse local files again, then go up one level (to Steam/steamapps/common) and copy the Kerbal Space Program directory, then paste it where you want to keep it- make sure it’s outside Steam’s folders so it can’t meddle with it in future. Rename the KSP folder so you know what mods you’re using in it (e.g. 1.10.1 RO/RP-1, 1.12.3 JNSQ), then add this new copy to CKAN and use the modpack created in step 3 to reinstall all your mods; or reinstall them by hand if you don’t use CKAN. Double-check that all files and folders you had in GameData before uninstalling/reinstalling everything are there again, if not then you’re probably missing some mods. Move your saves from your desktop into your new KSP copy’s saves folder, run KSP, load save. A warning about vessels having missing parts is usually because a mod is missing or wasn’t installed correctly. You can make as many copies of KSP as you want, have several copies on different versions and with different sets of mods in each- CKAN makes this much easier to keep track of, but it’s still possible to do it all yourself. Use the RP-1 express install option on CKAN as that will install everything you need for RO/RP-1. A few options are available with different texture resolutions and extra visual stuff like a realistic Cape Canaveral, but you can delete these extras afterwards if you don't want them.

Terrible idea, for the simple reason that rubidium has a really high atomic mass (85) compared to lithium (7) and ISP is determined by exhaust velocity, which decreases with increasing molecular mass. It's also a lot less reactive than lithium, which will readily shrug off that extra electron and hence makes for a really energetic rocket propellant when combined with fluorine which just can't wait to get hold of said extra electron. Lithium's use in batteries, fluorine's toxicity and the logistics of trying to keep both liquid in close proximity when fluorine boils at several hundred Kelvin below lithium's melting point, not to mention the hydrogen fluoride (a.k.a. hydrofluoric acid) produced as a byproduct, are just some reasons why this was A Bad Idea and, like boranes and chlorine polyfluorides, best left in the history books. The other engine you're describing sounds like the RD-701, a rocket engine designed for the MAKS spaceplane in the late 80s. It would burn both kerosene and hydrogen in the atmosphere for maximum thrust, then switch to just hydrogen once in space for maximum efficiency (switching off the kerosene turbopump but leaving the hydrogen one running as it had separate pumps for each fuel). The result was better efficiency than plain kerolox and better thrust than plain hydrolox, plus a denser propellant mix meaning smaller tanks were needed- useful for a spaceplane where larger tanks mean more wing and more thermal shielding are needed.

This install is completely broken and won't load, all I get is an unending wall of exceptions whenever I try to load the save. I tried making a new install and reinstalling the same mods, but with the "normal" Beyond Home, however this didn't work either as CKAN refused to install it, acting as if it was already installed when it wasn't. I might make another more story-driven, stock-ish report in future, but for now this one is over.

Shot for the Moon. Missed completely. That white speck above the probe is the Moon, missed it by about 4 days. Turns out, eyeballing a flyby of the Moon without patched conics isn't nearly as easy as doing so for the Mun. I'd better get that Tracking Station upgrade going...

Blood contains a lot of iron. Iron is heavy and will directly reduce ISP. Blood doesn’t burn very well as it’s largely water with some blood cells in it- for every litre of blood, 1000g is water and 50g or so is everything else that could conceivably burn to release energy. Blood will coagulate, forming a lumpy mess that will just clog a rocket engine’s tubes, unless it is handled very carefully; doing so for the large quantities needed for a rocket would be very difficult indeed. Where exactly do you plan to get sufficient quantities of blood to use it as a rocket propellant? The average human adult has about 5-6 litres of blood in total, which is less than 10% of their total weight- pretty terrible for a mass fraction even without the extra gubbins needed to keep them alive so they can produce more blood. There are many more energy-dense biological substances you could have picked- ethanol, bio-oils, methane- which are already produced in industrial quantities and which are superior rocket propellants to blood in almost every way. Even then, you can’t get something for nothing and you’d need to carry the raw materials required to synthesise the fuel with you (or possibly mine it in-situ if you can get hold of sufficient carbon and nitrogen to produce the fuel needed to visit the next source of carbon and nitrogen) and that’s just dead weight. Just why?

“Best” is subjective, it depends entirely on what you want to do there: Best for getting a gravity assist for capture/escape? Tylo. (Whether you wanted that gravity assist or not…) Best for refuelling? Probably Pol. Best for flying? Laythe. Best for enjoying the view from the surface? I’d say Vall because it’s much easier to land on than Tylo. Best for finding deceased oversized cephalopods? Bop. Best for being able to take your helmet off and not instantly die? Laythe, but only near sea level. Best for radiation exposure while using Kerbalism? Vall. That place is lethal. Best for having weird inverted biomes? Vall- highlands are below midlands for some reason. Best for cave exploration? Tylo, though there’s only one and it’s a bit boring. Best for weird terrain scatters? Pol.

That was EARTH space low data, not Titan. Contracts are glitchy though, enjoy the glitch in your favour for once. When doing flybys of moons you should adjust your orbit at apoapsis where orbital velocity is lowest and the little delta-V you have makes more of a difference- NOT periapsis where it’s only a tiny fraction of orbital velocity around a gas giant. Put your node on the blue orbit (before the next flyby) and use the gravity assist to your advantage, not the purple one which is after the next encounter and even further out of alignment.

So you’re trying to create a standardised set of launch rockets and upper stages to reuse for different missions? The best way I know to do that is to use dummy payloads- ore is especially good as it’s very heavy and dense, requiring only a few ore tanks to get the required payload mass, and also dirt cheap; fuel tanks with locked feeds so they can’t be drained are the next best option. Build your dummy payload to the required mass and then build an upper stage (or stages) that give you the required delta-V for what you’re doing with it (Kerbin orbit, Mun/Minmus orbit, interplanetary transfers are more variable but a delta-V map will give you a good ballpark number to work with). Re-root the vessel to the decoupler that the payload will be attached to on the upper stage, remove the payload and save the vessel. Then create another dummy payload that’s as heavy as your new upper stage and payload combined and build a launch rocket that can put that into orbit. Remove the upper stage and save that too. Repeat until you have a selection of different upper stages and launch rockets for different payload masses and destinations as needed. Keep in mind that adding more fuel to an upper stage will reduce the delta-V of every stage below it and that reducing the payload mass even slightly can reap big increases in overall delta-V- and conversely making things heavier will reduce delta-V pretty significantly. Always include a little extra delta-V to make up for losses due to drag, course corrections and especially for long burns which are often not perfectly pro/retrograde and so lose a bit of delta-V through cosine losses as a result.

^ this ^ RealChutes has a weird old UI that can only be accessed via the action groups menu, but it lets you resize the parachute case and set all the parameters for the chutes like when you want it to open, desired speed on landing and what planet to base its calculations on (landing on Venus requires little more than a cocktail umbrella, but on Mars anything but the tiniest of probes will be a parachute-assisted powered landing at best) among other things. I recommend that you add the mod Custom Parachute Messages, which as the name suggests allows you to customise your RealChutes parachutes either Perseverence-style with an encoded message, or with a variety of patterns. Available on CKAN or here: