king of nowhere

I told you in my answer. that example was able to make kerbin-laythe and back 3 times without refueling.

you mean, the plane goes on its own and will not discard stages? I've seen a record of going to laythe, then land back on kerbin, then again on laythe, then again on kerbin, and a third time without refueling. considering extensive gravity assists were used, that translates to about 17000 m/s. Most of that was using air-breathing engines, though. I don't remember if it included ions. if you can use stages, potentially there is no limit.

Part 10: The alleged rover The Hamburger rover is used to explore Duna and Ike. It suffers from a lot of shortcomings, and gets bugged too. No, I'm not unhappy with the design. I worked under the constraints of caveman and kerbalism, I did what I could with what I had. It's already a small miracle that I managed to bring a rover to Duna in the first place. IVA view from Duna. Unfortunately, I need to better see the navball, so driving in this fist person perspective wasn't really viable 10.1) On Duna 10.2) On Ike

yes, but that means without clipping you'd have needed more mass the record holders forgo isru entirely. they have a tiny spaceplane that can do kerbin and laythe, an ion rig, and they do most everything else with jetpacks to save fuel. as you have isru, there was no point using a jetpack instead of landing.

No need to go that far. Congratulations! Though I only inherited the role of challenge keeper recently, I checked the other low mass entries, and they all made extensive use of jetpack. Yours is the lowest mass entry that actually landed the ship everywhere. Too bad all that clipping (which, I surmise, is meant to contain all the draggy parts inside the structural tube to reduce drag) disqualifies the entry from the ranking.

I checked it, and your entry doesn't just violate rule number 2, it murdererd its entire family and danced on their corpses. Your submission will go to honorary mentiones. By the way, I see you have a nerv, a rapier, a convert-o-tron. those together are 6.5 tons, including the drill. You also have room for 10 tons of fuel. Did you start with fuel tanks half empty? You should provide proof. If you run for low mass, you should start with some way to have the mass clearly on display. Just opening the deltaV tab on the lower left corner would display the mass. I don't want to sound too much like a pain-in-the-ass. It's still an impressive spaceplane.

This thread is now outdated, there is a new jool 5 thread I will review your submission, but for the sake of having all the stuff in one place neatly organized, please post in the other thread P.S. sorry to disappoint you, but the current record for low mass is 5.2 tons. Your result is still very good, though

Part 9: To brave the open space Paleodiastimoploio reaches Duna. Everything goes according to plan, except for one slight, grave miscalculation. Duna is visible above the tank train 9.1) Tools and calculations 9.2) Didn’t think this through 9.3) All aboard! Next stop, Duna 9.4) How I shoot myself in the foot 9.5) How it should have gone

a ksp2 challenge goes in the ksp2 forum. although i don't see a jool5 in the ksp2 forum - rather, i see one, but it includes flybys. very weird. try asking in the ksp2 general subsection, maybe.

you know, that's exactly the kind of problem my students are expected to be able to solve at the end of the topic. except it misses several important details. namely: - how much water you want to be able to heat? for a shower, you need a flow of 0.17 liters per second, if you are happy with slowly filling a tank, it can be less. - by how much you want to heat that water? do you expect your design to raise temperature by 10°C? 20°C? that, and flow, will determine the amount of heat exchanged. of course, the upper limitation to that is the heat that can be generated by your solar heater. - I'd also need the diameter of the inner copper tube give me those data, and I can calculate something. but as a very rough start, a system like that should be able to exchange roughly 1 kW of heat per square meter of surface of the copper tube per degree of average difference of temperature between the flows. I'm using 3000 W/m2K as convective coefficient for water, as a table i found claims it's a typical value for water in forced circulation. I'm using the same value for alcohol, because i can't find an appropriate value but it can't be too distant from water. you can use that to calculate how long the tube needs to be depending on how much heat you want to exchange

yes, that's my best guess too, but it should still include the information "how often are you going to clean up the exchanger". without that information, a fouling factor is kinda useless. and that information is not included in any source i could find, and even the best case only mentions that time is a factor without being any more specific. P.S. you don't want to take the average of a sawtooth curve. you want to take the worst performance possible. because your chemical plant will have to keep working up to the point when you clean up the thing

I admit, it doesn't have much to do with kerbal space program, or with space in general. But this forum is the best collection of nerds and stem-oriented people I know, and it was exceedingly useful in providing answers when I had an issue with cryogenic cooling. Besides, I'm doing this for a group of kids. Somebody think of the kids! I am a high school teacher of chemistry, preparing a lesson on heat exchangers. My university curriculum was more on organic chemistry, I'm not a huge expert on the topic, and the textbook is not helping. So, fouling factor. Your heat exchanger is going to get dirty, so you have a fouling factor to deal with that. it's a simple addition to the heat exchange coefficient. However, the problem I have is that I expect fouling to build up with time. I would expect a fouling factor to have a buildup per day, showing how your exchanger becomes less and less efficient with time, until eventually it's time to clean it up. You could also use one such formulation to determine heat exchanger size depending on how often you want to run cleanup. But no, fouling factor is a simple factor that doesn't account for time at all. I've been looking in the internet, but that's the kind of very specific stuff that's hard to find. I found lots of textbooks, but none mention time. The best I got is this quote underlined by me the parts that are more useful. this piece acknowledges that time is an important factor, and that the exchanger will become less and less efficient until it has to be cleaned up. However, it doesn't in any way help with determining how often you have to clean it up. It's like the fouling factor assumes that you are going to clean the exchanger regularly, before the efficiency drops even lower than the factor would suggest. But it doesn't in any way help determining how often that cleanup must occur. Once per day? Once per week? Once per year? I would assume that in the dairy industry you will need daily cleanings for hygiene purposes alone, so it's pointless to design a heat exchanger to work more than 24 hours without maintenance. But in the oil industry, you'd rather keep the machinery running for as long as you can, having to stop a whole distillation column daily to clean it would be unacceptable, and therefore you'll want them to run longer; possibly as much as a year, so you can shut down the plant during summer for maintenance, send most of the workers in vacation, and have the maintenance team clean. But how that affects fouling factors? are the fouling factors for food liquids calculated over different times than those for oil? or does fouling eventually stabilize to a certain level of inefficiency? is the R factor a kind of asymptote to which the fouling tends? but in that case, why do regular cleanups, if it's not going to get worse? The way the textbook simply dismisses the problem by giving the formula with the fouling factors is extremely confusing. For the sake of preparing a better lesson for my kids, I hope in this forum there's some engineer with specific knowledge in the field that can answer.

Part 8: Giving the rocket equation its due Sending up all the fuel for Paleodiastimoploio. Also, Paleodiastimoploio is finally finished. At 230 tons and 550 parts, it's way bigger than I was expecting 8.1) Propellant for the propellant god 8.2) Tanks for the tank throne

Sometimes they do, but every time i used those panels, i had to fix their positions individually afterwards. Just use the rotate tool.

50 m/s is generally fine as horizontal speed for landing. it's harder to make a plane that can fly slower than that. though all my experience comes from using higher tech, sturdier landing gear. maybe low tech planes are more limited

you hit the ground too hard. the altimeter indicates 10 m/s of vertical speed, that's too much for most parts. you also weren't even with the ground

to be specific, I only use vernors on fuel tankers. normal ships are too small to justify the extra mass, and they don't really need rcs anyway. larger motherships don't need rcs, it's other ships that move around them. but a dedicated fuel tanker, in the 100-500 tons range, is big enough that reaction wheels aren't all that comfortable to use, and it has to dock lots of times. they are the only case when spending half a ton for easier docking feels justified.

vernor engines are practical on large ships. but they weight 80 kg each. even just having one for each of the six directions requires 480 kg of extra mass. so, if you build motherships in the hundreds or thousands of tons, vernor is the way to go. for smaller crafts, using something lighter is better. and the small amount of monoprop held by most crew pods is enough, no need for extra tanks

that's a huge attitude issue. he wants to learn, but he doesn't want to do anything to actually learn. it's like declaring that you want to get fit, but don't want to go on a diet or go to the gym. maybe one day we'll get magic pills for it, but right now, if you want results you have to put effort. it is possible you are a bad teacher and he doesn't get the way you explain. but then he should do the tutorials. maybe you could tell him, with a kind but firm tone, that he has to learn somehow, and ask him what he is actually willing to do in order to learn. explain him that while he can learn by doing, he needs some basics first. and conclude by remarking that if he's not willing to put in some patience to listen, then he doesn't actually want to learn after all. though pretty much anything worthwile in life requires effort. those are life lessons that extend far beyond this game.

Part 7: Preparing for Duna Going to Duna requires a lot more preparation. Besides, it also requires a dedicated lander. Paleodiastimoploio is expanded to take care of those needs. Paleodiastimoploio now has everything it needs, except the fuel tanks 7.1) Harnessing some sled dogs 7.2) Bits and odds 7.3) A rover for the red planet 7.4) Moar bits and odds!

it says propellant requirements not met. maybe some part is blocking fuel transfer

Fun fact, you can perform at least part of a circumnavigation on eve underground without using any time warp sheanigans. the terrain glitch at the south pole has an entrance i went in and drive around a few minutes. i don't know if the north pole has a similar entrance to go out, though

Part 6: Paleodiastimoploio's maiden voyage Paleodiastimoploio goes to bring a crew to Minmus, then take a dip in solar space. Besides colllecting some science, the mission serves as a general test for the future Duna mission. No major issues are found, though a few things can be improved. 6.1) To Minmus 6.2) At Minmus 6.3) In solar orbit

Part 5: A new mothership is complete Paleodiastimoploio is completed, at least the parts necessary for a Minmus mission. Paleodiastimoploio full status. Oxygen is low because I'll need to make more from water 5.1) Minmus lander 5.2) Fuel tanks

there was another guy a few months ago who had the same problem, it turned out it was just a bug. you tried reloading? restarting the game?