king of nowhere

burning oxidizer would consume rocket fuel too, which you can burn in the nerv for greater efficiency. i have a spaceplane with a mix of darts and nerv. fully fueled, burning the rockets until there is no oxidizer and then the nerv, it has a range of 4000 m/s. if i dump the oxidizer, i have 4500 m/s. I need the darts to get in orbit, but once there, i have no reason to keep oxidizer

yes, ok, but there is a large difference between using an rcs thruster, that's precisely aligned to ggive torque, and using a main engine, whose thrust vector goes very close to the CoM and provides very little torque and a lot of unwanted thrust. i belive it can be done, and it may even be more efficient on some extremely light probes. that does not make it advisable. a very small reaction wheel, something in the 10 kg range, would be useful. there's already been a discussion on this. if you have a rapier, or a mix of rocket and nuclear engines, you may want to dump oxidizer.

on the other hand, every aircraft i've ever flown (which, admittedly, were not many) had a point where it remained stable on its own. so once i found it, i could remove my hands from the control, and the plane would keep circling the planet even if i left the game running in the background. with a rover, otoh, i need to manuever. i'm past the point where i need to circumnavigate craters or slopes, but every time i hit a bump i don't land perfectly straight and my course is altered, i must compensate eventually. and i have to dodge the occasional surface feature.

i did read the wiki, but it left me with more doubts than answers

well, armstrong was a famous cyclist, and he went on the moon. while playing jazz, no less! (for those who don't get it, there are three famous armstrong, and i'm conflating them into the same person)

i just discovered the functionality to set waypoints with kerbnet - just after i am mostly done exploring several planets and i won't need it for long anymore. but anyway i noticed that if i have a ship in orbit, i can only set a waypoint underneat the ship. or rather, in the narrow cone underneath the ship. i am in an equatorial low orbit, and i can only mark points a couple degrees north or south. i want to make a waypoint to a crater around 25-30°N, and i have no way to do it. even if my orbit was polar, i'd have to wait until i am exactly over the place to set a waypoint. I can see it would work much better if i was in a high polar orbit, but i'm not there. is there some easier way to set waypoints? since i'm here, and i just discovered kerbnet: i know it's supposed to detect anomalies, but how does one do it?

caps lock works wonderfully. thanks, this saved me a lot of troubles

when using the wasd controls to change attitude, the game always push in the chosen direction as much as it can. this works for a spacecraft, where rotation is slow and you have no reason to delay. unfortunately, it works really poorly for rovers and planes. on a high speed rover, i want to make small manuevers. more times than i can count i crashed the rover because, while i tried to give the key the quickest touch, it wasn't slight enough and it produced a massive turn that sent me tumbling. is there any way in the stock game to reduce steering speed? for planes i could manually reduce the maximum angle of control surfaces, though the thing could bite me if i actually need a steep manuever. for rovers i would like to reduce steering range, but it's pretty much the only thing in the wheel you can't control. P.S. I do NOT want mods. I don't like the idea of installing a mod for everything, and they invite krakens

i have to calrify first, a cycler does NOT save fuel. sure, the cycler will keep moving between both bodies, at no cost, but to dock with the cycler you have to match its speed, which is already equivalent to the speed needed to reach the other body. quoting from wikipedia, but that doesn't mean anything. once you make your ejection burn and enter the hohmann transer orbit, no propulsion is required. once you already made your manuever, no propulsion is required. in fact, i dare say a cycler wastes more fuel. though in real life you have the advantage that you can make it bigger, and you only need the extra speed for the probes that will dock with it. so you can have a massive space station where your astronauts can live during the several months of transfer, while the probes needed to get to the station are smaller and can skip most basic necessities, since they will only be inhabited for a few days. in ksp your astronauts can live forever in an external seat, so you have no such limitations. that said, a cycler between kerbin and mun would orbit kerbin with low periapsis, and its apoapsis would get close to mun. it should stay out of mun sphere of influence, or th eorbit would be perturbed. and it would need to have the orbit syncronized so it will get close to mun at each apoapsis - it doesn't help if you're at the same apoapsis if mun is on the other side of the orbit. for minmus i'd say it's impossible to stay syncronized with minmus while avoiding mun entirely; eventually you'll end up in mun SoI, and the gravity assist will kick you off trajectory.

i've seen asteroids on collision course with kerbin in my career, and i've never seen anything happen because of them. so, i assume you can ignore then and be safe.

This is a kerbonaut at Vall's south pole. there is a majestic peak there. the apparent hole in the mountain is a glitch found on most poles. falling in will cause you to die. i named the mountain "kraken maw peak"

that's because the rocket is taking some time building up speed. when it does, it's hard to stop. you'll need to practice pointing the rocket in the right direction, because otherwise you can't manuever.

the mk2 part has excellent heat resistance, though, making it best suited for atmospheric reentry. as for the hitchhiker storage container, it is indeed inefficient, but i used it in many applications where i did not have mass problems because it looks good.

that's quite a nice image, and it underlights the problem i was raising: if you actually do your burn like that, how can you predict where you'll end up? you started burning on one side of the orbit, and you exited on a completely different side. real space agencies have softwares to do those kind of calculations, and i'm sure some mods can allow the same. without access to those resources, though, that kind of manuever cannot be predicted accurately enough to be of any use. 1/4 of the orbit is still a manageable time. in my cases i needed a 20 min burn, and i got a result like the one in your picture, where i ended up pointing in a wrong direction.

I doubt it. I mean, that's the result you get by integrating the cosine over the whole orbit. it assumes that, while you burn, you stay in orbit. which is not what's going to happen. especially with the orbital approximation of this game. what actually happens is that, as you exceed escape trajectory, your ship is going to leave orbit entirely. and it's going to come out of your SoI pointing at a completely wrong angle. I'm too lazy to produce screenshots right now, but I can. I did send a spaceship with TWR 0.11 to jool. twice. unless you are talking about raising your orbit in a spiral, which is what is done with real life ion propulsion, but i'm fairly sure that's more than a 40% loss of efficiency. in my experience, the best way to deal with low twr is with tricks. first one is raising periapsis peemptively. you have to burn for 2000 m/s, but you can burn the first 900 while still remaining in kerbin orbit. so, do that first, and then you only need to burn for 1100. which is still a huge amount with twr 0.1, but still manageable. if you have to go nearby, like to eve or duna, you can eliminate any problem with this strategy (actually, you can get there with a mun gravity assist without making long burns). It works best if you make your long burn in a long orbit, perhaps returning from a moon. maybe that's what you mean with suicide oberth burn? if that's the case, i can confirm that it is fairly efficient, as you will have a long time when prograde will coincide with the direction you want to burn. another option is raising periapsis. it's something you normally want to avoid, you gain no benefit and you lose oberth effect, but it makes your orbit flatter, reducing cosine losses. can be worth doing in some cases. but the best option by far is to avoid big burns by using gravity assists and other convoluted trajectories that only require correction burns. last but not least, making manuevers in kerbol orbit is also a good way to avoid cosine losses. sure, you'll lose all oberth effect, but at least your orbit is so slow you can spend hours making your burn without any noticeable loss In my case, i found that i needed over 2500 m/s to go to jool immediately, but i could lower it to 2200 by going to duna first, entering a high orbit that would put me eventually around ike, and then from ike fall back towards duna and make the bigger burn there.

no limitation, 100%. it consumes more electricity, but it has a bit more power when going uphill

i go too fast and do crazy stuff all the time. now i'm roving on tylo, and due to good gravity, lack of atmospheric drag and smooth terrain, i reached 100 m/s several times. i exploded the rover when i lost control, but again, never happened to break a wheel. as for putting too much wheight, i have no idea how much would be too much, but with 8 ruggedized wheels i can barely move upslope. i cannot climb more than 5 degrees of incline without help. that would make me think the weight is too much. but then, sometimes i lose control and the rover capsize and slams violently on the ground with a single wheel, and the wheel stays whole. i also did drive over 100 km on kerbin to go scan giant quartz, and i exploded wheels, but never broke them

so, you can do cruelty on human(oid) as much as you like, there was even a challenge to make torture implements with the game, but absolutely no animals. huh. i stopped reading to post this, but apparently i'm not the only one dumbfounded. i blame politically correct

yes, that works for launch, but hope you never have to make manuevers again. i suppose you can do it for some relay satellites

without knowing in detail what you're doing wrong, i also think the most likely possibility is that you are not recovering that science.

how can you not have attitude control on a ship? if you must point your rocket in one direction, and you are not and have no reaction wheels, are you going to turn on the rocket in the wrong direction and use gimbaling to eventually move it right? i can't believe this can work. personally, since my light probes still need some kind of science capacity, i prefer to use the rgu; it has reaction wheels AND science container integrated, it's the lightest and least encombrant combination i can get of those 3 parts. If i need stronger reaction wheels and more battery, i use the hecs2. speaking of command moduels, what about the QBE? 30 kg heavier than the okto2, same functionality. are there any reasons to use it where you would not be better off using an octo2?

it uses for the rcs the same commands you use for the jetpack, making it slightly more intuitive to use for somebody who learned to use the jetpack but not the rcs

i just can't see what's the advantage over using the smaller rgu - possibly into a service bay, that on a ship that big is practically a guarantee. an advantage that would be big enough to justify 0.4 tons of extra weight. i have a mothership with nuclear engines, and a lander with normal engines. nuclear engines are more efficient, and they do not use oxydizer. i needed some extra deltaV, and i wanted to dump my oxydizer supply. as far as nuclear engines are concerned, it's just dead weight, and it would be more efficient to do it than to burn the conventional rockets. i couldn't do it because i was missing a fuel valve. not for lack of engineering, i made it and then deleted accidentally. it's not the only time i found myself longing for one. sometimes you desperately need to get rid of weight, and if you have isru you can always get more fuel. i've used it occasionally. so, i find this thread very interesting. apparently, there isn't anything that everyone agrees is completely useless.

Part 5: meanwhile, on Vall Exploring Vall by rover was basically a matter of patience. I don't have much of it, so the rover must be fun to drive. Not much to describe here, so this will mostly be a picture gallery. Vall is awesome, the more time I spent on it, the more I'm liking its views. I ended up snapping over 70 screenshots, though I'm not so crazy as to upload all of them. I marked my path with flags at irregular intervals. I often named places, generally according to some random occurrence. Vall has 9 biomes. 4 are easily accessible anywhere, the remaining are localized. 2 are near the north pole, 2 are near the south pole, and then there are the poles themselves. Landing on the equator, I started going north to the first biome, then to the poles, then down to the second. There I refueled before taking off to the skies I went into a high orbit, where I collected all biome science from there. Afterwards, I landed in the southern emisphere. The two biomes I needed to visit are on opposite sides, so I landed on one, passed over the south pole and went for the second. Vallhenge was fairly close and required only a small detour, so I visited there too. I'll start with Christmas Tree landed for refueling. Luckily I only needed a couple of (really slow) trips with Dancing Porcupine before this thing had just enough fuel to land itself and use its much more efficient mining gear. https://youtu.be/H6otPSIQicY This video is a typical exploration: I go forward for a while, at some point I lose control and crash. If I survive I save the game, if I don't, I reload. Good thing Dancing Porcupine survives most of the time. I'd like to save more often, but I need to stop before the game allows me to. And with that big fuel tank and rockets, it's definitely a heavy rover: 50 tons full, 19 empty. Accelerating is slow, braking is sluggish. And it consumes a lot of electricity, while the solar panels are virtually nonfunctional and the rtgs are not enough to power up a vehicle this size. So, I really can't be bothered to stop and save until an obstacle stops me. https://youtu.be/WXeVTVZAfE8 And this is a most spectacular accident, where I decided to go down a ravine without braking just to see what would happen and I reached the crazy speed of 120 m/s before finally losing control. I am quite proud that my sturdy rover managed to protect its crew and even to retain enough wheels to keep moving. At that speed, I wouldn't have bet on any outcome other than total destruction. This is mount Heart, so dubbed because of its shape Taking a group picture on the slopes of mount Heart This I called mount Godzilla because it looked like a giant lizard. Though I'm not seeing it again. At most it can be a frog. I also wanted to give it an impressive name because it was the first mountain above 7000 that I climbed; but it was dwarfed later by other peaks. When the slope gets really hard, I must help myself with rockets. I had to build in this feature because the rover is heavy and has problems upslope. I fear Tylo will be much harsher. Even though I keep telling them the rover is perfectly safe, Bob and Leiga don't look particularly persuaded. This is Enchanted valley, a place that struck me as particularly beautiful even in an already beautiful planet. Though I'm sure part of it is the light, just right to create a magic atmosphere. The image of the solitary floodlight piercing the darkness has a strong impact on me. It's like... here is nature, big, majestic, uncaring. But here there is a light. here is a bastion of civilization. Here is comfort, safety. I am reveling in the majoesty of the wilderness, but I'm prepared to deal with it. It's a bit like watching a snowfall outside the window while warmly snuggled in front of the fireplace. This is Batman pass. it reminded me of batman's head. Once more, the similarity is less striking when seen in retrospect This is northwestern basin, the last biome I visited in the northern emisphere. I stopped here for refueling And here I landed in southern valleys I let Bob ride outside for a while. He liked it Some more nice imagery with internal perspective this is "Seen it First" ravine. I stopped and saved before going down and I took this picture in the process. Just 20 km earlier I passed a crest and suddenly found myself going down a steep ravine, crashing the rover. I've been driving nonstop for 15 minutes, and I had to reload that far back. I called that "Oh Crap" ravine. After that nasty surprise, I was more careful to scout in advance for such obstacles. I discovered this early on and avoided crashing on it, so i named it "Seen it First". And this is the south pole. While most mountains in this game are flat-ish and not at all impressive, this peak stands out for its near vertical slopes. The peak itself is part of a fairly impressive mountain range, whom I called the Mohawk range because this straight, long and narrow crest of mountains on top of the planet reminded me of a mohawk haircut. But the south pole is the most impressive. The patch of stars is a glitch happening at the poles of most planets. If you fall in, you die. So, I named it "Kraken Maw peak" You can better appreciate the open maw, ready to swallow hapless explorers. The flag on the tip is barely visible at this distance And the underlying cliff The view is amazing, though. Uninterrupted line of sight on all the ecliptic This straight line is a terrain feature following almost exactly 90 degrees east. From the ground it's not easily visible, it looks just like a natural part of the landscape that there would be an incline there. But from high up, its artificial look cannot be denied. It points straight to the valley where Vallhenge is, so I called this the Vallhenge channel. It looks like it continues northward too. The Vallhenge channel crosses those mountains through this narrow pass. They look nothing special, but the pass itself is at 6500 m. The mountains around must be among the tallest on the planet. Vallhenge is on the other side. This part of the path is on the southern face of the mountains in the southern emisphere, and so it is always in shadow. I named it the "Shadar Logoth trail". Fans of the Wheel of Time will recognize the name, for everyone else it would take too long to explain. The path is very rugged and very steep, I had to burn a lot of fuel to climb and I broke my rover a record number of time. It was well named. Pushing upward through Shadar Logoth trail Pass cleared, and first sighting of Vallhenge! I'm not even sure uploading the image kept a good enough resolution for seeing it Almost there From Vallhenge I started back to reach the southern basin, the last biome. Then back to orbit to leave for Tylo.

the way the chain is made all of moving parts, i'm surprised it doesn't lag your pc to death