king of nowhere

now that i have again a decent connection, i can post some pictures. link to some old pictures from my mission reports, actually, but i couldn't see them when i had a slow connection that failed to load So, examples of type 1 here i was going from eve to kerbin. i was in an elliptic eve orbit and i had little fuel, so i could not choose the direction of ejection - and it was wrong for a normal transfer. so i placed the orbit in a way to intersect kerbin, eventually. my orbital time was very close to that of kerbin, so it took 8 years. Here I am going back from jool, i just had to return to finish a challenge and i didn't want to deal with transfer windows, so i made the first burn in jool's orbit to put solar periapsis on kerbin's level. once i was at periapsis, a retrograde burn changed my orbital period until i had an intercept the next time i would be there. it still took longer than it would have to make a regular transfer, but it was the lazy approach: i burned out of jool's system until my periapsis was 13.5 Gm, then i time warped to periapsis and i burned retrograde until i got an encounter. didn't require any fiddling with manuever nodes Here I return from a gravity assist. I wanted to reach Duna after a kerbin flyby, but the two planets were in the wrong positions. So I spend one or two orbits in a parking orbit (purple) before raising apoapsis for a Duna capture. this is a slightly modified version, i had to pick the right periapsis to get the timing right. Again, it was part of a long sequence of manuevers. Here instead I will show some fast trajectories. They are from my kerbalism grand tour, having life support forces one to take some design choices. I'd never have particular reasons for using those trajectories in the stock game otherwise. Here I designed an ion powered escape pod/return vehicle with 15 km/s deltaV because life support and kerbal healtcare would be issues requiring urgency This is an Eeloo return in less than one year. It costed 7 km/s. I burned mostly radially to achieve it, with just some slight corrections based on where kerbin would be. since the trajectory brushes past kerbin's orbit, the intercept speed is actually quite sane given the circumstances: roughly 3 km/s, bringing the total deltaV for the trip at 10 km/s. To find this trajectory I burned retrograde to lower periapsis, and radial to reduce time to periapsis, until i was crossing kerbin's orbit at periapsis in more or less the desired time. then i adjusted inclination until i could find a close approach. then i refined the close approach. Here I am returning from Dres. Kerbin is in the totally wrong position to return in less than one year, so to catch it i'd have to take a very close slingshot near the sun to be faster. 7.5 km/s ejection from Dres, 10 km/s Kerbin intercept. But return from Dres in 230 days outside of a transfer window; a normal travel time is a couple years. To find this trajectory I burned radially and retrograde to make a close slingshot past the sun, and i adjusted the inclination to find a close approach marker. if i was behind the planet, i needed to go faster, so i added more retrograde and radial. repeat until approach. Finally, this is a slightly more sane version of the previous trajectory. it gives up on intercepting Kerbin on the other side of the sun, and it just crosses its orbit when it is passing in a convenient point. It only costed 3 km/s to get the intercept, but because I'm crossing kerbin's orbit at almost a right angle, intercept speed is 11 km/s. the dolphin capsule can survive reentry at 9 km/s, i had to slow it down a bit. I covered the minmus-kerbin distance in less than one hour. To find this trajectory, i burned retrograde until i was reaching kerbin's orbit in less than one year. then i roughly eyeballed where kerbin would be by that time, and i used prograde/retrograde to adjust my position to get more or less close to there. fixing inclination got me a close approach marker, then i just had to refine. so, i hope that helps in case you have to find trajectories outside of regular transfer windows. but it is unlikely to appease to your current situation, as a type 1 trajectory will lose you more time than just waiting the transfer window, and a type 2/3 trajectory... well, i somehow doubt you packed so much deltaV unless you were planning in advance to do something like this

i'm not sure what you are asking. i think you are asking about doing interplanetary transfer outside of a transfer window? would fit with the window being a bit more than one year later. well, short answer is, you don't. i mean, you can, but it costs an inordinate amount of deltaV and/or time. unless you have a long ion stage, you will need manuevers that will make you lose time. if you still want to try... ok, two ways. first is intercept in multiple orbits, and second is force a direct intercept with large cost. Unfortunately i am using mobile connection and can't show you pictures. so, first way. you just intercept the orbit somewhere. you want to go back to kerbin? well, kerbin orbits at 13.5 Gm from kerbol, so you make an orbit with an apoapsis there, and 0 inclination. you will reach your apoapsis when kerbol will be somewhere else, but it's ok... orbit after orbit, sooner or later you will meet kerbin. eventually. Not a great idea. You can help this encounter by burning at apoapsis: lower periapsis for a faster orbit, raise it for slower orbit, this way you can syncronize your time for a future encounter. in any case, it will take multiple orbits, and it will be slightly more expensive than a direct transfer, but there are reasons to use that; most common when you are doing gravity assists, so you don't have the luxury of having planets aligned. Second way, force a fast intercept. Ok, so again the thing to know is that if you raise your apoapsis, the orbit will be slower. so, kerbin is behind you and you will miss it? but for a high solar apoapsis, you will slow down, and you can meet kerbin on the way back. this manuever is VERY expensive; expect a kerbin intercept speed of many km/s. There is even a third way, a variation of this, when you want to really spend a ridiculous amount of deltaV: point your navball to the target, and burn like there's no tomorrow. eventually you'll go so fast, kerbol's gravity will be negligible. it doesn't have many practical applications.

strange. I could swear I got direct gravity assists to Duna just with a minimal Mun insertion, but trying it now only sent me to a 16 GM solar apoapsis, and I needed 950 m/s kerbin burn to reach Duna with a Mun assist. i guess i was wrong. But i still could swear getting to duna with the single 850 m/s Mun injection... still, if you eventually go on a solar orbit with a kerbin resonance, i see no particular reason why you can't do that with a single mun assist? burning at munar PE was never the intention. I was just under the - apparently erroneous - impression that you could go directly to Duna with 850 m/s. Re: "overthinking your assist will be bad",while i definitely admire camacju's mastery of gravity assists, and i am aware that they do save deltaV, i do not consider 44 years an acceptable time for a jool mission.

I have a question though, was all that complicated trajectory necessary? when i go to Duna, I generally do it with a single Mun assist without any problem. while i admire your gravity assist mastery, in my own experience overthinking them too much loses more than it gains

everything. it starts from ion engines, because they are the ones that are used for long times. but once the bug strucks, no engine on the ship will work. and it is a large mothership intended for a grand tour, so it has a lot of different engines for the landers, and i tested several at random. none works. i got this bug too, but i got it in the past too. not sure if ever got it before using persistent thrust, though. and never noticed it anymore after removing the mod. i can say that saving/reloading generally works for that. Well, simple solution for me so far is to remove persistent thrust, and just put it back in the folder again if i have to make a long manuever with ion engines.

if you are coming back from low orbit, you can forego the heat shield if you don't mind losing the solar panels. from interplanetary destinations you need a heat shield. the good thing about those small probes is that they are very light and with a large surface, so they aerobrake a lot. they fall down at around 50 m/s without parachute, so they only need a little braking. i have experimented with even more extreme avenues of weight saving. i tried to make a lithobraking probe, no parachute and no rocket, just some structural parts that could take the impact. couldn't make it work without adding too much weight. and i tried to add two wings to land like an airplane. it worked, sometimes. problem was, the only "wings" light enough to make it worthwhile are the basic fins, and they have abysmally low thermal resistance, so they tend to burn during reentry. but they were fun attempts.

A battery looks big, but it's just 5 kg. a parachute, on the other hand, is no less than 100 kg - unless there is some modded lighter version. on a probe so small, it may actually be more convenient to mount a more powerful engine and rocket brake.

yes, SAS won't help if you leave it turned off. or perhaps you have it on, but then the probe goes in shadow, the batteries run out, and sas deactivates. Yes, you should add a battery. the basic one is a bit bad for aerodinamics, but there is the stackable circular one that you can put between the body and the nose cone for only 10 kg. then the octo does not have the functionality to hold directions. it will keep your probe still, but it will not point to any specific direction. you have to direct it manually. you said your probe was drifting, right? i assume you were trying a prograde burn, started with the prograde indicator there, and then the probe gradually shifted away from the indicator? in this case it's not the probe drifting, it's the prograde direction drifting. as you circle the planet, where is prograde changes. so yeah, you will have to make the manuever by hand holding the direction and compensating for that. Finally, i also see in the picture that the probe icon on top is in yellow. which means it has somewhat limited functionality. it's in the sun, so it has power. perhaps it is still hybernated?

when i was playing career i was trying to reuse everything. once i got isru, after establishing a few heavy multipurpose vehicles i never launched anything else. shortly afterwards, i stopped playing the career because there was no challenge anymore. another thing i do if i want to run things cheap is launch ssto. simply because the game makes it easier to recover the cost, unless you have a mod for booster recovery. during my no contract career challenge i developed the reliable Donkey launcher composed of a twin boar, 2 jumbo fuel tanks, and a 25 ton payload in a fairing. simple, low part count, fits into a level 2 launch pad, and can be recovered entirely. it launched stuff at 400 kerbucks per ton in orbit. if the first stage is not reusable, using solid boosters instead of liquid fuel engines also saves money. nowadays i generally maker big elaborate expensive missions. saving money is uncomfortable. i mean, yes, ok, i could put a hecs1 instead of a hecs2 and save 6000 funds, if only i want to deal with not being able to track manuevers and having less control on the ship. meh, no thanks. i know i can pilot a ship with little control. i made mun landings without SAS. but i don't like doing it and i don't have to prove anything in that regard. regarding your 1.2 million mission, it's definitely big. some people completed a jool 5 with less than 30k. but then, one needs to look at the objective. if your grand lander comprises a baguette tank with an external seat on it and an ant engine behind, and all you're going to do is plant a flag for the bragging point and get back, then of course you can do it cheaply. you are launching a full fleet of multiple crafts to jool, and those crafts have long term objectives. so of course that mission is going to be more expensive.

I just performed a staging on a big ship with plenty of pieces flying around. I wanted to take a nice screenshot of the whole thing, but it wouldn't come well because it's night. it's far from the first time some great screenshot got ruined by lack of light. especially far from the sun, where everything is in shade. and i have bop because, between craggy geography and low light, everything is always in shade and i can never see the landscape well. enough with this! so i thought, it would be nice to add a light enhancer for the purpose of sightseeing and screenshotting. with two distinct options: 1) ship visible. Every piece of ship is illuminated, so it's always visible in darkness. good for seeing your ship, and taking my screenshot of stage separation 2) terrain visible. No more shadows, or at least less deep shadows. So you can finally appreciate bop as a whole. if there is already this option, please point it to me!

doesn't seem related to any of that. it happened the first time with a small probe without time warp. was in low kerbin orbit and the probe was just launched. now it happened with a large ship in high kerbin orbit. Again, changing time warp doesn't seem to matter. and the ship had been flying over 1 year. two things in common between those occurrences: in both cases i have the kerbalism mod and i am using kerbalism gas containers as xenon tanks (but chemical engines also stopped working, so i would rule out a problem with recognizing fuel tanks). and in both cases, i have a large (750 parts) ship into physical range, and ships that big tend to spawn little krakens wherever they go.

This mod revolutionized the way I used ion engines; unfortunately, it is bugged. in my most recent save, the engines randomly stopped working. fuel is plentyful, electricity is plentyful, there is full control, but the engines just do not work. even liquid fuel engines are not working anymore. and it happened multiple times; other times i was able to fix just by saving and reloading. this time it's not working. but it worked again once i removed the persistent thrust mod. I can provide additional information if needed

and yet another thing in favor of jool is the gorgeous scenery I strongly recommend bringing modules with a good view, like the cupola and the Mk2 landing pod

so there is a 1.5% difference. what's the issue?

Well, my grand tour with kerbalism was already posted for the ultimate challenge, but since this thread collects also grand tours, i suppose i can get a mention here too.

a command pod, 14 fuel tanks and a swiwel will get you ssto with general rocketry. you unlock it with 5 science, which you can get on the launchpad

even knowing where it is, even magnifying the view as much as possible, jool becomes visible to me between 5 and 10 Gm. either you have much better graphics than me, or you are just mistaking a random star with a planet.

oh, my. i thought it meant you came from firenze, though. i didn't realize until now it is a character from assassin's creed

ok, given your name i assume you are italian, so i will answer thusly. correct me if i made the wrong call intanto, alcune cose tradotte non hanno molto senso, quindi prova a riscrivere il problema in italiano. e MOLTO IMPORTANTE, mandaci IMMAGINI. se l'aereo non sembra andare affatto probabilmente ci sono problemi fondamentali nella costruzione, come mancanza di controllo o mancanza di elettricità o altri simili problemi. ma senza vedere non possiamo fare ipotesi

hey, just discovered this. i like overengineered missions, and i like big motherships with dozens of probes that will have a tool for everything. 850 parts, not bad. your ship has a nice sleekness about it. you should get more upvotes.

on mun, the jetpack should still lift you. it's just that they made the ground a bit sticky in the 1.11 to prevent a few bugs with bouncing/sliding. try jumping as well as activating the jetpack. you need to jump to leave the ground, but then you should fly regularly

look, if you want to make your own attempt, please open a new thread. don't hijack mine

i had some success going for duna and doing some aerobraking there during the gravity assist. multiple kerbin assists are feasible. then again, with 4000 m/s, you can easily get back to kerbin from pol without any problem. 2000 are more than enough.

on the Dream Big i built the greenhouses that way because when i made the ship i didn't knew how radiations worked. On the Dream Big 2 I built them that way because they can be pointed away from the sun - and it feels right to expose the greenhouses to sunlight otherwise, even if there are no in-game benefits for it. while you are in a radiation belt, instead, everything is equally exposed, doesn't matter how you rearrange your ship On A'Tuin I put the greenhouses and all habitation modules on the inside, so that the landed ship is protected from every angle. it still doesn't help for radiation belts. covering with structural panels would add weight and part count and wouldn't help. as for 4 emergency rtgs, they wouldn't help at all. too little energy. while orbiting jool I had 50 electricity/second, and even that was inadequate. it was barely enough to run the basic systems. greenhouses were off during that time. i'd have needed at least 40 rtg for power. And rtg lose power over time, on a 20 year mission it will matter. Well, Nail has something like that, but Nail isn't particularly serious as a concept. Anyway, Dream Big's emergency power supply are the 4 fuel cells arrays and enough hydrogen to run them for days. And then electrolysis slowly regenerates them. There are 64 solar panels on Home, plus other 70-odd on the various shutttles. there's no way they all fail. if they were to start failing in large amounts, i'd have used the dolphins to evacuate the crew. There are 4 fuel cell arrays for periods of darkness, one of those alone is enough to cover for emergency if the other 3 break. Plus 2 small fuel cells on each Digger and 2 on the FU Eve, that can all help in an emergency. If somehow all this was insufficient, then there is no way 4 rtg would ever help.

the optimal altitude for aerobrake also depends on the drag/mass ratio of your ship. as a rule of thumb, a big ship is harder to brake than a small ship because of the square cube law. so an altitude that's good for a small ship does not work for a big one. that said, the first 10 km of the duna's atmosphere brake very little, and the subsequent 10 km are also very thin. you start getting some serious drag below 30 km. I generally aerobrake around 20 km.