king of nowhere

ever since my first weeks into this game i wanted not just to land on planets, but to move on them too. After less than one month, I already cruised halfway around the mun with a small rover, despite it being a fairly crappy design. My first major achievement was a large manned rover to roam freely on any moon. Even if I don't use them, I feel better if I can put wheels on my landers, just so I could move around if I wanted. And while I generally dislike planes, I took an interest in propeller planes because they allow roaming freely - and expeditely - on the planets with air and oceans. I keep being surprised by how rare that attitude apparently is. I asked advice on improving the aerodinamics on my latest plane project, and I got a lot of answers that - while competent - clearly denoted that everyone who was answering had a single specific kind of plane in mind: something that starts on the runway, goes to orbit, flies back to the runway. Some even got to laythe, but without any intention of flying around the place, just land, plant a flag, and return. "share your rovers" has been voted thread of the month, but few people posted on it. And except for my model, all of them were very small, clearly not intended for long distances. it seems nobody is interested in driving a rover on long distances. indeed, i got the record for most science on a jool 5 run because i did drive a rover on every single biome on tylo and vall, and nobody else did. even in the "what did you do today" thread, rovers (or leisure, exploration planes) are virtually unseen. While the sharing of space stations and spaceplanes is very crowded - though each and every one of those space planes are only meant to be launched from the runway to orbit and back. i'm also, apparently, the only one who cares about putting in a crew module with large windows, so I can drive in first person perspective. I'd like to discuss, is my passion for surface exploration really so rare? Or are there other people who like driving rovers for long distances, and they just never dared to make a coming-out? Why are there so few people who like exploring surfaces? For me, exploring surfaces is a natural consequence of space exploration. sure, we got there and planted a flag on it. great acheivement, but it doesn't tell us all that much. going there and being able to move around, that a greater achievement. I feel that a lander that lands and moves around is inherently superior than a lander who lands and does nothing else. To the point that even when I don't want to explore, i still like it more if I have the chance. just because it makes my vehicle better. It can also be very relaxing. I can understand, though, that after a while the surface of any given body feels samey, and it can grow dull. By the way, sometimes I also name places, especially when I like where I'm driving. On Vall I have mount godzilla, batman pass, the mohawk mountains, the shadar logoth trail. Am I the only one to name places?

true. however, there is also the matter that i want to fly on laythe too. air is much thinner, so the plane must have decent flyability in those conditions too. Maybe all those wings are not needed, but if I have to land on the side on an hill, then i want my plane to be very manueverable. which means more wings. I will try reducing wings later, but i won't have the luxury of a flat runway. i also want to be able to make water landings. and possibly i would also like to take off from water with a small help from the darts without spending too much fuel. else how do i take surface samples from degrasse sea? less wings may certainly be beneficial for a quick trip to orbit, or for a fast rocket plane. but they improve manueverability, especially at low speed. if i have a plane that takes off at 80 m/s on kerbin, it will need over 100 m/s on laythe, and then i won't be able to land it on mountains without breaking something. As for the Mk2, one of the first things i said in the opening post is that i'm aware they are heavy and draggy and overall bad. but they have high thermal resistance and the right crew size and the right cargo bay size, and that's worth the inconvenience. Yes, I am trying to juggle a lot of different engineering needs. I like it this way. on the plus side, the plane does not need to be excellent at any of those tasks, merely good enough. the latest design is already there, minus a bit of trimming here and there. Oh, I still have to test if it goes to orbit on two engines alone; if it doesn't, I'll have to figure out something or add a third couple of darts. and then check that nothing else broke in the process

you do realize this is a propeller plane built for exploration? it's a very different concept. most of my flying will indeed be done at low speed and low altitudes. once on a planet, i move around on the various biomes, landing and taking surface and atmospheric science potentially everywhere. the propellers are powered by rtgs, so they can go indefinitely. and I put enough food for one month. i will probably scout around a few hours before getting bored. when i leave, i go up as high as i can on propeller power. there is no worry about optimal ascent there, because propellers have infinite range. all that matters is that I reach as high and as fast as i can. then i close the propellers bays and i activate the darts, and in a few minutes I reach orbit, where i have my mothership waiting me. you, on the other hand, seem to be giving advice related to making a kerbin-based, rapier-propelled spaceplane to make a fully fuel-powered ascent and bring as much payload to orbit as possible. you don't have to worry about landing on a mountain in the middle of the sea. or driving it on the ground to align it with enough precision that you can take a scan of a geyser with the robotic arm. so yes, we have very different design objectives. i am going to pilot this thing for hours at speeds between 100 and 200 m/s, making a lot of take-off and landing on rough terrain during that time. I want a plane that's comfortable to drive at that speed and somewhat forgiving on the landing. easy to take off, because i won't have the luxury of a flat runway. i care about having large windows, it makes driving much better. on the other hand, i only spend a few minutes orbiting, and even though those may be miserable, as long as the plane does the job, it's ok. heck, my other design was a real pain in the high atmosphere, completely unstable, and it was mediocre even at low speeds. but it could take off from water on propellers alone, and with a mission of exploring laythe and bring back samples from any biome, this far outweights any other concern. I'd keep using that design, but having to add life support, radiation shielding and redundant pieces was too much and i couldn't take off from water anymore anyway.

actually, I don't want to take off from the runway at 100 m/s. I want to take off from Laythe on patches of irregular terrain. I also want to be able to land on irregular terrain, and my piloting skills are meh. This is a propeller plane, not a jet-powered thing. and it's for exploring outer planets, not for using around kerbin. moving the center of lift and and landing gear and adding canard were good tips. I don't know what did the trick, but now i can take off at 50 m/s. which is more or less the target for something that's comfortable to use on laythe. I was starting to suspect something like that, indeed it was the case. the darts were attached not to the end of the cargo bays, but to the rotors inside. so both the darts and the cargo bays had some virtual big flat surface exposed to the airflow. i fixed that, and now it's solved the drag problems. Now the plane can obrit kerbin, which means it can also orbit laythe and tekto. as for eve, it all depends on the lift stage. on the other hand, i wonder how the plane could flip with so much drag on the bottom... i also discovered that the crew cabin is quite draggy. it would improve the plane to move it backwards, but i don't want to lose the better view. which, so far, is not obstructed too much by the wings. finally, the clamp-o-tron is very draggy, despite being shielded. in fact, i tried as an experiment to strap two more normal clamp-o-trons, the drag difference is negligible; the shielded one is maybe 15% less draggy. both are also much draggier than the aerospikes. i also tried to swap places to see if it was an artifact, but no, those data were consistently reproducible; the shielded clamp-o-tron reduced drag is so small, it may not even be worth the extra 50 kg it adds. i tried to install kerbal wind tunnel, and it was utterly ineffective. i've been very wary of aerodinamic mods ever since. well, no, not really. i've simply never tried to make a complex plane ever since. as i said, i don't like planes and i'm just forced to make one by my self-imposed challenge. yes, i was at 2 at mach 1.1. not the best flyer, but that's often the case when trying to make a vehicle fit for multiple tasks. as long as it flies well enough and it reaches orbit, it'ìs sufficient. it doesn't have to bring any extra payload except for a bit of science

this is the wrong subforum. it should be under spacecraft exchange. in fact, i believe there's already a station megathread there

lithobraking. we all know it. the missed manuever, the impact, the explosions... that's not the lithobraking i'm talking about. i learned the word on this forum, but i was then surprised that lithobraking is a genuinely available technique for slowing down during landing. of course, it entails surviving the crash. for example, the first mars rovers used to hit mars on inflatable airbags; that was lithobraking. the philae lander also lithobraked on comet churney-gerasimov, though in that case it was only moving at a few m/s. but how far can you push the concept? So here's the challenge: make a lander that survives the highest possible landing speed. To better elaborate 1) there is only one factor for ranking, which is speed relative to the ground at the moment of first touchdown. though a special mention will go to whoever will manage to make a lander that can actually save weight by lithobraking (i.e. you show that the heavy landing gear was lighter than the fuel needed for a normal rocket braking in the same conditions) 2) you can use your rockets as much as you want before touching the ground, you can even use the alt-f12 menu to get into the desired orbit. but after you touch the ground, use of any form of propulsion is forb idden 3) the vehicle will likely bounce a few times. surviving the first touchdown is not enough; the vehicle must eventually reach a full stop. in fact, in my experience, surviving the subsequent bumps is much harder than surviving the first. 4) the vehicle must not sustain any damage. Exception: damage that can be fixed by an engineer with a few repair kits is ok. damage that can be fixed with eva construction is not ok. POSSIBLE EXCEPTION: if enough people take part in this challenge and there is a request for it, I will add a category for "survived with damage", where it is allowed to lose some pieces along the way as long as the vehicle keeps working (to be determined on a case-by-case basis) 5) planets with atmospheres are forbidden. the purpose of the challenge is to lithobrake, air would be an unfair help. 6) to better document speed relative to the ground, it is suggested to record a video of your landing. be sure to document everything until you come to a full stop; as i mentioned, it is easy enough to survive the first impact, much harder to survive the subsequent ones, because you have no control over your trajectory and that's it. i tried to land on minmus from orbit, it took a bit of trial and error but it could be achieved. Then i went for the next bigger body, Bop. that was much harder, in part because of the topography. But I eventually made it, after hitting the ground at 187.1 m/s. Next step would be trying on Ike, but I doubt it's possible. I could try on Minmus from a higher orbit, but for now I'm satisfied. Let's see if someone will do better P.S. It is recommended to install some mod to ignore time warp limits. I didn't have one, and I had to actually wait at 1x through all those suborbital jumps. It took 50 minutes. it's a better experience if you can time-skip the boring parts Top scores 1) @dnbattley 560 m/s circa, on Mun. 2) @king of nowhere 187.1 m/s, on Bop. 3) @xendelaar 160 m/s circa (no exact value), on Minmus. He also made a whole propeller-free mining facility, where he throws fuel tanks in orbit with a giant slingshot and recovers them by lithobraking. He gets the special mention for having a system that's actually cheaper than proper rocket-braking

really? if it can't take off, i'd assume the opposite. also, consider it has to fly on laythe too. and swapping big-S wings for other wings make me lose fuel, so 4 big-S are better than 2 big-S and some smaller wings, even though the second may fly better. can a plane with zero angle of attack even work? there is another limitation here: i want to leave the docking port behind because for eve i dock there the ascent stage. so it must be backward, aligned with the center of mass. also, with kerbalims every engine has a small chance to fail on ignition. the plane should be able to reach orbit with 2 engines, at least on laythe (and tekto should be easier, with the propellers clearing most of the atmosphere), and i have 4 in case one breaks (and i also have to shut down its symmetric). so, the four engines are pretty muich a necessity. i could swap out a couple of darts for some cubs placed radially, but they increase drag too, and they are less efficient. didn't knew that, i'll try it i wish. propellers get me to 170 m/s. afterwards, i closed the propellers bays to reduce drag, and i activated the darts. I have 4 darts pushing, for a TWR of around 1.5, but i can't go any faster than that because of drag. By the way, if I could optimize the plane to clear up more of the atmosphere on propellers alone, i could also accept more drag, it would be less of the problem.

planes are pretty much the only part of this game that mostly eludes me. unfortunately, i have a penchant for making highly reusable missions that can also explore the ground. Landing an ssto on laythe is trivial, but if i want to also go multiple biomes, a plane is pretty much a necessity. so here i am, stuck with making planes. So here's the deal: I want a plane that I can send inside Eve, coupled with an ascent stage (possibly one that can be detached on the surface if it is too bulky to explore around freely). then the plane goes back to orbit, shedding the ascent stage. then later the same plane descends on laythe; it gets back from laythe all in one piece, and is later reused at tekto, from outer planet mod. I also want the plane to have a good IVA view, this rules out any crew pod without large windows. I actually have a workable design for laythe and tekto, but it does not work on eve and it has other shortcomings, which i was hoping to fix. so here is the attempt yes, i know what you are thinking. "omg Mk2 parts! Vade retro! vade retro!" Yes, i know. they are kinda bad. unfortunately, my tried-and-true design with Mk1 parts explodes from heating on Eve, especially the crew capsule. Mk2 parts have better heat resistance, hence this. the in-line cockpit has larger windows, which is why i'm choosing it. I also have other reasons for this Mk2 design: - the cargo bay is larger, i can fit more stuff inside. the other version had 3 Mk1 cargo bays, and it had much less room than this one which has a single 250 kg cargo bay. It works a lot better. having the kerbalism mod, i can use it to store more and more redundant life support systems, and i can fit inside reaction wheels in a way that they can be swapped out if they break. something i could not do with the other model - the crew pod has 2 places instead of 1, and it is pressurized (again, a thing of kerbalism), which is better for the pilots. So, i really would like it if i could use this version. Unfortunately, it has many problems: - tends to flip - difficult to take off, requires 100 m/s to lift - poor manueverability - heavier - huge drag when using rockets "heavier" cannot be avoided. I have 2 pilots instead of 1, in a larger cabin. it's heavier, and it requires more fuel to lift. For the first three, I already know the problem: the center of mass must be shifted forward! yes, ok. how? shifting the lateral tanks to the front would then require to also shift the wings, because the center of lift must follow the center of mass. and then i'd aso have moved the control surfaces, which will be the same distance from the center of mass. i could shift the crew cabin backwards of add more fuel tanks in front, i don't want to do that because it would block the view from the crew cabin. also, pushing the front wings forward would look ugly, as they would go over the part where the fuselage starts to thin, leaving a hole between wing and fuselage. even worse is the drag i'm only at 350 m/s, but i am losing more for drag than for gravity. on a plane that looks very aerodinamic. i've seen flat top launchers with less drag losses. and I really have no idea what's causing all that drag, as i repeat, the shape is very aerodinamic. what are those two huge red arrows? which parts are causing so much drag, and why? btw, the purple lines are not real, the propellers are safely stored inside cargo bays, but the game keeps the aerodinamic arrows if you activated them before. i like this design. i'd rather use it. it has many pros, and it looks good. but it's unworkable for two reasons, one the center of mass that i can't figure out how to fix, and the drag, which i can't figure out where it comes from. I am open to suggestions

I use the alexmoon launch window planner on github for transfer windows. feels better than adding more mods

1.12 is out? it will invalidate my mods! How do I stop steam from auto updating? I looked at the update setting, but there is only "update immediately", "update only upon start", and "update with high priority". no option to not update.

that's also why i stopped playing career and went to only play single missions. after getting some experience, yet another contract for bringing tourists around, or bringing parts to test around, or surveying a certain area, become tedious

with a conventional reentry, a small simple capsule made of a Mk3 command pod with 2 parachutes and its thermal shield, I survived a reentry at almost 8.5 km/s, braking all the way to full stop. i also tried 10.5, and i exploded. the limit is somewhere in between. it is possible that more heat shields may withstand even harsher braking, but in my case i had activated g forces, and i got close to 40 g as top deceleration. more than that, and it would have killed the crew and smashed the ship anyway

i'm running challenges, mostly big missions with multiple objectives and self-imposed limitations. A lot of those don't give you the chance to build a relay network, so pilots are useful there to keep full control while shadowed by a planet. I'm on the opposite side here. I'm like "I've done this difficult thing, what can I pick as next challenge that's even more difficult?" I worry what will happen when i'll run out of interesting challenges

yes, i have kerbalism. Wasn't aware that modified the reactor so profundly. adding radiation spread around and adding a chance for malfunction adapts the part to kerbalism. I had no idea why all the other stats were modified too. at this point the question becomes irrelevant. i just accept that under this tampering. with my specific mod combination prometheus is better, and i will use it

A question on near future electrics: there are two nuclear reactors that produce 2000 E/s: the MX-2S Prometheus and the MX-3S FLAT. Of those, the FLAT is listed with the lower weight, but once you remove the fuel, the Prometheus is actually a bit lighter. They produce the same amount of energy, consuming the same amount of uranium, generating the same amount of xenon as byproduct. Is there any specific reason to not pick always the lighter prometheus, except perhaps shape? also, the FLAT is described in very enthusiastic tones, even though it looks objectively worse than the prometheus

I am seeing inconsistent behavior from the parachutes. At least, behavior inconsistent with my naive idea that all parachutes are basically equal and depend only on weight. This thing is a Digger. It weights 80 tons (with tanks empty, as is the case right now), and it has 8 radial parachutes, so 800 kg, so 1% of its mass.+ Here it is seen rocket braking just before the landing. But in the next picture, taken from inside the cockpit, it's just gliding down, and you can see it's going at 30 m/s And the next ship is Stool. Stool weights 15 tons when full, as was the case in that landing. It has a single Mk3 parachute, so 300 kg, so 2% of its mass Yet it's coming down at almost 50 m/s. It's still pretty high up there, and it slowed a bit more before reaching the ground. Still, it was falling at more than 40 m/s. So, Stool has twice as much parachutes by weight, and yet it falls faster than Digger. Digger was landing at a mildly lower altitude there (5000 m for Stool, 2500 for Digger), but even taking that into account, it's not enough to justify the difference in terminal velocity. Heck, it would not be enough to justify the difference if the parachutes were equal! I once landed a Digger at 5000 m, just a few km from where I eventually landed Stool, and it was still going slower than 40 m/s. How is it possible that more parachute mass results in less parachute efficiency? Is the Mk3 parachute crappy? Are multiple overlapping parachutes more effective because of some glitch? Were parachutes reworked in the last update? (Digger landing is around january, while stool is from earlier this week). Is there some other reason?

the problem with human experiments is that humans are terrible test experiments. take a mouse. a mouse lives in a small cage on very small amounts of food. it makes no problems. it breeds fast, so you can get a lot of them for testing. a man has nothing of that. a man is expensive to grow and expensive to keep. you want to make a test on how something affects men through generations, the test is going to take decades. and the data you get is not even particularly informative the pedants did human testing on their prisoners, and they never discovered anything useful. there's a reason for it

indeed, near future electric not only has reactors, but it has reactors using uranium and requiring the mining of uraninite to keep working. i wasn't even daring to hope to find that!

i tried using rigid attachment in the past, and as you said, the ship was brittle and broke easily. i didn't even try in this case. it may even be that it could work better. but it would be very hard to gauge. i tried rigid attachment with my previous ship Dream Big, which also had problems of structural stability, and I didn't notice any visible improvement. The problems only happen occasionally, so to compare the better way to handle them, I'd have to try both versions with and without rigid attachments, for prolonged times, and run detailed statistics. A lot of boring work. On the other hand, autostruts alone reduce stability problems to a manageable level; parts spontaneously detaching, after the initial assembly phase (where i always forget to autostrut some key component), are extremely rare. parts getting misaligned are ugly, but they revert spontaneously and they cause no lasting harm. Overall, improving the stability would require too much work for too little gain

Part 7: The Duna system The two parts of Bolt rejoin at the Duna system, and explore it. There are way more malfunctions than anticipated, but the ship is still in good healt. The timing for the Jool transfer is a bit off and will force some extra fuel cost, but a lot has been saved with the previous manuevers, so it shouldn't be a huge problem 7.1) Engine pack goes to Duna 7.2) All roads lead to an Eve flyby (Bolt goes to Duna) 7.3) Boltransformer 2 7.4) Hiking on Duna 7.5) Racing across Ike With this, it was time to move on. I spent enough time around Duna. Now I will finally see if my calculations handwaving about radiations at Laythe are correct. I will finally see if my landers perform well, if at all. The truly dangerous part of this mission begins as soon as I reach the gas giant. Bolt has still almost 2000 tons of fuel left. I expect at least feeding the NERVs won't be a problem

those are small, real-looking rovers, meant to be landed on a surface and drive around there. I like to have multipurpose rovers that work as spaceships, land under their own power and take off again, carry around a crew for long term missions and can drive long distances without being boring. My dancing porcupine rover is the first large rover i conceived, and my first large project (as in, a ship that i spent several days optimizing). but still to this day i haven't found anything better to cover the wide array of tasks that rover can accomplish. at most, i made different versions of it https://kerbalx.com/king_of_nowhere/dancing-porcupine-the-indestructible-rocket-car 50 tons fully loaded, 8 ruggedized wheels to propel it over 30 m/s, 3500 m/s of deltaV with enough thrust to lift off from Duna, isru capability, panoramic interior view. It can't land on tylo, but I made a version with more rockets to do just that. it doesn't have enough deltaV to leave tylo's orbit, though, so it needs a support ship for it. it also needs a support ship to reach moho, due to the high deltaV required. bodies with thicker atmosphere, on the other hand, are completely off limits, this vehicle is not the slightest bit aerodinamic. it gets its name from its special armor of landing struts, that allow it to bounce over the ground harmlessly. it is almost indestructible at upwards to 30 m/s, and very effective - though not guaranteed - up to 40 m/s. above that speed, breaking stuff is likely. recent updates have made the ruggedized wheels more vulnerable to direct impacts, so an updated version of the rover includes landing struts on the bottom too, to be deployed quickly when you start losing control. I pushed it to 100 m/s once on tylo and survived to tell the tale. Actually "pushed to 100 m/s" is not particularly accurate, what happened is that i was going downhill, and i started to go faster than the brakes could stop me, and past a certain speed even touching the brakes could send me tumbling to my death, and then i just had to keep driving and hope to keep the rover upright until i reached the end of the slope. I reached 120 m/s going downhill on vall, but it ended with explosion. to showcase the armor's effectiveness, the rover lost some pieces but the crew survived and the rover was still capable of moving afterwards (linked video). of course, being optimized for so many functions, dancing porcupine has many weaknesses. the main one is that its mass make it sluggish, it accelerates and brakes slowly, it has a hard time going uphill. i fixed that last issue by adding the option to turn the rockets backwards, of course it is an expensive option. it also uses up crazy amounts of electricity. going uphill on tylo and vall was a real chore. and, being asymmetric, its flight is not particularly stable. taking off from tylo required 3000 m/s, partly because of the low thrust, and partly because it kept fighting against the controls. I'd also like to mention my newest rover, dubbed Stool, which I'm using on a mission to locate all the green monoliths. it's not as fancy as dancing porcupine, but it has its highlights the rover is based on a wide platform with rockets and wheels with a command pod docked on it. having ruggedized wheels, it also reaches 30-40 m/s on flat ground, with a wide base for stability. It doesn't have a porcupine armor (couldn't afford the weight this time), but it has strong reaction wheels, to keep pointing in the right direction. they proved surprisingly effective; i've done 70 m/s going downhill on Ike and lived to tell the tale, a feat dancing porcupine could not replicate. being only powered up by two rtgs, it must be used conservatively. it weights a bit above 10 tons with full tanks. it is powered by 4 sparks and 4 cubs, giving it plenty of thrust for Moho. the engine pack was designed for the additional challenge of kerbalism; that mod, among other things, introduces a small chance of malfunction for every engine every time it is turned on. A long mission exploring many planets can expect something to break up, and this design can keep going after losing an engine. using a couple of terriers would have been more efficient for isp, but a single malfunction would have compromised the mission. stool has 2000 m/s, just enough to land on moho and return to orbit. it also lands and take off from duna, but just like dancing porcupine, it is not aerodinamic enough to handle the thick atmospheres; i have other landers for those. life support on something so small could not efficiently cover interplanetary travel, so i didn't try to make it capable of independent operation. it has supplies for one month, which is enough to explore gilly while the mothership is parked around eve. it also has redundant life support, electricity and communication, again because with kerbalism stuff breaks up. it does not have a backup parachute, a design mistake i didn't realize at the time. well, i hope the parachute holds long enough. i also did not try to add isru, because kerbalism makes it much, much harder. I called it stool because, well, the image is self-explanatory. the command pod can be detached and reattached elsewhere, this lets me save some weight on the overall mission - especially important here because, between life support and radiation shielding, that pod is heavy.

it's hard to assign difficulty levels in this game, because there are many different skills involved. one may be very good at building efficient launchers, but never gone outside of kerbin's SoI. One may be great at flying ships but lacking any experience at rovers. I mean, i did a grand tour with kerbalism, as far as i know i am the first. I am probably one of the best in dealing with life support, redundancies, and general management of large ships on complex missions. i've set up rendez-vous between ships orbiting different planets, reaching a third planets at the same time on escape trajectories. I also made some really neat rovers because i like exploring surface. on the other hand, my general approach at throwing stuff into orbit is to strap more engines on it until it lifts. i can optimize pretty well if i need to, but nowhere near the level of some people i've seen. and i'm barely passable at planes. i can make something that flies, but not well. and don't even get me started about landing on top of the vab. even concerning rovers, which i consider one of my strenghts, there are distinctions to be made. i make multipurpose rovers, stuff that lands on planets, moves around the planet, take off and goes somewhere else. i'll never enter a rover racing competition, because that's a different skill set. so, assigning skill levels is mostly pointless beyond broad strokes. Bradley Whistance list is especially egregious there; i could not make either of his level 2, but his level 3 and 4 are too easy to be worth mentioning. if you really want to rate skill, the best way would be to look at one's top achievements, letting them shine in whatever specific thing they decided to shine. that's important: most people, once they get past the basics, will focus on something and ignore the rest. i've seen camacju fly to jool with less deltaV than i need to reach mun, and he's extremely good at it, and i may be able to replicate it if i applied myself to it, but i have no interest in a 30-years trajectory just to reach jool with a ship that will do nothing else. And perhaps camacju has seen my megamissions, and he may be able to replicate it if he really tried, but he has no interest in spending weeks to reach multiple objectives. Meanwhile, my brother has never gone past minmus, but he likes to carry tourists back and forth for minimal cost on reusable launchers; i wouldn't be able to make those missions as cheap as him. let everyone get their glory, there's no need for rankings

well, pretty much what it says on the tin. i would like to expand my grand tours with the outer planets mod. unfortunately, energy output drops too much at those distances (i actually experimented with 100+ gigantors, but beyond jool even that's not enough). sure, i could use RTGs, but i don't much like the idea. first, they produce 0.75 energy each, and i'd need about 100 of them to power up the greenhouses. second, they are kinda ugly in concept. they work well for small probes, but i am making large greenhouse ships in the kilotons range. so I would like a nuclear power plant, compatible with the kerbalism mod. Actually, since kerbalism adds various ore on planets, and one of them is uranium minerals, my dream would be to have a nuclear plant slowly consuming an uranium resource, which i then have to mine on the ground. that would be ideal, but i doubt there's such a thing. and yes, i am aware that there are mods that support big ships better than kerbalism. the problem is, without the threats of radiation and starvation and parts breaking up, i don't feel there's much of a point in making large ships. I make those huge beasts because, once one takes into account the redundancies to ensure the ship will keep working after some accidents, the amount of life support needed, and the radiation shielding, then a huge ship is the bare minimum to make the mission. So, kerbalism has to stay. but kerbalism doesn't provide good power sources in the outer kerbol, so i'm looking for options.

i don't know about that. i think it's a "typical optimized" from low altitude. as in, if you make a good launch trajectory, you get that. and it holds for the other planets. on kerbin i really need 3400 m/s to orbit. make it +- 100 for aerodinamics. on eve i actually need 8000 - of course with a very aerodinamic payload, bad aerodinamics would hurt a lot. and 2900 for laythe is also a good approximation, again, with good aerodinamics. what i'm puzzled at, for the other atmospheric planets they are using the value for a craft with good aerodinamics. for duna they are using a typical value for poor aerodinamics. it's like they are assuming that you'll have good aerodinamics when leaving kerbin, laythe, eve, but poor aerodinamics when leaving duna. and it's actually correct with the stuff i fly, but i doubt i am a common case

why is the surface to orbit deltaV for Duna listed in the map (1450) so high? you need much less to defeat the gravity, and you only get such a high value on an extremely draggy lander. I mean, I got a 1450 m/s cost to reach orbit. With this craft as you can see, it's not an optimized duna ascent vehicle. i'd have a hard time making it more draggy than it already is. i used that design because i wanted a lander/rover, that would fit within a 30-parts limit (including launcher), cheap, and that could be reusable for all the small bodies. and of course it sucked on duna, but it worked nicelypassably everywhere else but that's not a normal duna lander. i hope. Later i went to duna with a craft that still had poor aerodinamics, but was big enough to not care too much about it it's still got many flat surfaces and things jutting out from the sides. but it's 280 tons when fully loaded, the square-cube law makes drag much less relevant. and this thing made it to orbit with 1100 m/s. an optimized lander with good aerodinamics (i've actually never flown one; i like multipurpose ships, and those can't be optimized too much for a specific task) will probably need even less. shouldn't it be better to update duna's deltaV map with a value around 1200 m/s? a nice compromise between a sucky draggy lander and an optimized one? or maybe most people actually use sucky draggy landers on duna?