paul_c

23 Skippers points to a severe defect in the design, something must be muddled with the staging (ie dropping hundreds of tons of unspent fuel, etc). Hence, the suggestion to roll back and keep it simple with no more than 3 stages; and learn the basics of deltaV and TWR.

Decay =/= perturb

If you're in career mode then a Science Lab and 2x scientists is a good idea, will earn loads (of science).

IMHO SSTO is overrated. There is an engineering balance in weight/complexity of staging, decouplers, extra engines etc vs the performance benefit it brings (ie once you're 99% of the way there, why are you hauling a 6t engine and 10t of empty fuel tank, instead of a 0.15t engine and 300kg of fuel (tanks)). I believe for LKO, the performance (delta V) requirement is enough in that for pretty much all payload sizes from the smallest of probes up, staging makes sense. 2 stage might make sense for a really small rocket, for others 3 stages often makes sense.

Given the market share of AMD and the fact their own 64-bit instruction set became the de-facto standard (rather than Intel's Itanium), I'd say these days CPU compatability is a non-issue. There might be sparodic issues with bits of unusual hardware (drivers) here and there, but not CPUs themselves.

Mun data return was uneventful: Minmus data return took much longer, I came out of Minmus SOI then did a series of burns to gradually lower the orbit, including this one to 100% avoid inadvertently hitting the Mun's SOI (or the Mun!!): Eventually reaching this: Just grazing the atmosphere with ~2000m/s deltaV left, looking good! I had not planned in massive detail, instead just played it "safe" with excess fuel/performance etc. The design of pinging off 9x or more modules helps a lot too: Safely home (nearly): Minmus science haul: Tree completed with 8.5 science to spare: Settings and KSC: So overall, COMPLETE!!!! I went to share the news in the Astronaut Complex but they'd been celebrating for the past 2 days anyway. The swimming pool is being dredged as we speak. In review for "Diamond" challenge, its pretty dull at the start, money is VERY tight unless you look closely at the contracts and there's several bumps where you need to make do with lesser technology then work and work for the next little upgrade. The first trip to the Mun is hairy, after that it gets better. Minmus is essential but I left it until I had good experience of dockings and decent tech to do it with. Never bothered with 2.5m parts this time though. Also, I estimate about 10% of the science came from (lots of) contracts along the way. Personally I saw the risk of losing an astronaut as "game over" so I focused on remote probes ASAP, although in the start I built up a good bunch of data on suborbital performance to achieve "test/haul part xxxxxx at altitude yyyy and speed zzzz".

You don't need mods, you just need to understand how things work. Each experiment generates a known amount of data; and each aerial transmits data at a known rate, using a known amount of power. So you can calculate how much "burst" electricity you need, to transmit data; thus how much battery capacity your vehicle has. There is also "base" load electricity requirement to calculate, this is useful for knowing how many solar panels to fit*. *The other factor being, where will it be? A vehicle in a solar orbit is pretty much assured to "see" the sun 99.9% of the time. A vehicle in a low equatorial orbit will see the sun (slightly more than) 50% of the time with the time in darkness (slightly less than) 1/2 the orbital period. And a vehicle on the surface of the Mun, will be in darkness for 1/2 Mun month, due to the tidal locking (--> slow rotation rate of Mun). Land deep in a crater and its even less.

Post a pic of the rocket/thing you're trying to return. And also, which direction you're pointing it at on return too. Speed is massively affected by drag. The basic capsule on its own, is purpose-designed to be very draggy backwards (retrograde) and very aerodynamic forwards. If it enters the atmosphere, or returns, forwards, it will inevitably overspeed, the chutes will never even deploy because its "Unsafe" and the thing will make a nice crater onto the ground. KSP game makes it easy to return in that in the retrograde direction, its aerodynamically stable and will stay in that position even without control or SAS, but you will probably need to turn it to face that way initially. At some point it becomes too late to turn it, so do it early (when its high up and there's barely any air to produce aerodynamic forces).

I wandered into the astronaut complex (its pretty relaxed in there, there hasn't been a Kerbal'd space flight in months and no further plans for any) to congratulate the team on a job well done, even though its not over yet and I need to return a lot of science safely. Bob (scientist/astronaut*) and I sat down to do the detailed admin, which revealed we are actually 9 science points short of the target! So, we simultaneously look up to the sky, at the same time. I admired the fluffy clouds but Bob exclaimed "ouuuuuuccccccchhhh!!!!!" because he'd looked directly at the sun! Then it hit him - well, a ball of scrunched up paper hit him, the astronauts had been making paper aeroplanes but it descended into just rolling up balls of paper and throwing them at each other. We will go to the Sun! There is science out there! So we quickly cobbled together a rocket based on the successful Mun Explorer series, basically adding 4x big aerials. And launched it: Just avoid the moons, and keep the foot on the throttle for ages until the Ap is > 84Mm: Yay! Some sun science! Calculations reveal that we are still 0.1 short, but I'm hoping "World Firsts" from bringing back a vehicle that's landed on Minmus, will supply the last few. * Bob calls himself an astronaut because he scraped through the training but in fact has never been to space, and is terrified of heights. To the extent that he lives in a bungalow.

The first of 3 trips to the surface of Minmus. A fresh "science module" is attached to the front of the lander/remote/probe and sets off..... First landing, nice and safe (maybe next time I'll not put the aerials there!): And hop to an adjacent biome. I figured, to keep the hops small, land on one of the flats (they make up 4 of the biomes) then hop to lowlands/slopes/midlands: And return to the "station" to unload the data and pick up another science module: Another landing: For the last trip I was going to do "great flats" and "flats" but its quite a distance. A quick check on the map shows the table-top hill is "midlands": Final reconfiguration ready for the trip home. The science modules still have a bit of fuel in them, so I'll make use of it; then the probe detaches for the final time, this time with the "return pack" of chute/data/heatshield too:

The reason SRBs are recommended is the first part of the launch is really uncomplicated. Its full power, pointy end up flamy end down. If you're doing something different or unusual in the first 1000m/s, fair game! Having said that I've used liquid for 1st stage plenty of times, for example: * My first stage burns longer/does more, eg 1500 or 2000 m/s. It might be because its a "less stages --> more simple" kind of craft * I don't have radial decouplers yet and I don't want to make it thin and long. * I don't have the kind of SRB I want unlocked yet (eg there is a big gap in performance from one to another and I want one in the middle). * I am not bothered with cost Lack of control or throttling ability, in the initial lift off, are not reasons though.

Don't ask me how but I have achieved Minmus orbit. The space station is not built for flying. Pretty soon, the fuel imbalance twists it around when the engine's running, so 1/3 throttle at most made for long wobbly burns. Not so much a case of getting the launch window; but drunkenly crashing through another window which was left ajar, 5 blocks along from the original window, and waking up to find myself in the right house, albeit with a weirdly inclined retrograde orbit: Near and far Minmus space science done, some fuel used; so let's ping off the spent module for weight saving/performance: Bish bash bosh, a more-or-less equatorial prograde low circular orbit:

Sorry wrong thread!

Don't worry about how high or what Ap a particular thing does. It appears as if you're designing your rocket by adding a random number of [insert part here] until it looks good, then wondering why it doesn't fly. Suborbital: You point the thing directly up, don't care about horizontal speed and a deltaV of 1300m/s (with TWR 2.53 at start) will get you into space. Orbital: The only altitude you need to worry about is 70km. Get the Ap over 70km then KEEP IT THE SAME by burning TOWARDS THE HORIZON to raise the Pe to over 70km too. Orbital NEEDS a LOT of horizontal speed (about 2300m/s). Orbital is all about getting enough horizontal speed to remain in orbit. In fact what people do is start vertically then gradually tip over and over to horizontal in a smooth turn - the GRAVITY TURN. I would suggest the path you've taken so far - of designing a randomly-specified rocket, then multiple attempts at flying it, a lot of crashes, then installing MechJob to try and launch it - is ultimately limiting, for the amount of enjoyment you will gain from KSP. Go back to the basics. Stick to the tried-and-tested advice we see many times here - design a simple understandable rocket, based on the 2 important performance numbers which define how it will fly - deltaV and TWR. At the risk of repeating myself..... First stage: 1000m/s, TWR ~1.3-1.5Second stage: 2000m/s, TWR 1.2Third stage: 1000-1500m/s TWR 0.5

Is it an ATX power supply?

"Minmus Station" now complete. Its a bit wobbly, but what good space station isn't? 23.62t in LKO:

The case may be okay - depends how big it is and whether it has fitment for standard size, eg 80/92/120/140mm fans. A decent pair of fans would normally resolve cooling issues unless you're constrained by a bad grille, airflow etc. But...a new case is good too (just costs money). Don't forget you'll probably need a power supply too. At that point, its a new PC and its difficult to achieve under E300. If you can re-use case and power supply, you have a fighting chance though. Beware with issues with AM4 motherboards - if they can run Ryzen 1/2/3rd gen, they may not have a BIOS update available to 5000 series, or if they do, its a one-way upgrade. The issue is fitting all the code in for each chip all the way from 1000 series to 5000 series, so they are dropping the mobo support for older CPUs in favour of the 5000 series.

How long have you waited? Also.....Mac has a text editor.

Windows 10 settings --> about will show the type of CPU.

I totally forgot about occlusion modifier. The point being, 3 isn't perfect but will 99.9% do the job. The layout for an "ideal" 4 satellite constellation is possible but its a bit complex to visualise. When I last sent a bunch of relay satellites up I managed to design a very compact (vertical) package so it was possible to stack 6 without flyability issues of a taller payload.

Mini update: I have been round all 5 of the re-orbited Mun landers which gathered science, and now have a "returner" craft orbiting the Mun with 5x biomes worth of science on board. I might need to visit 1 or 2 further biomes, so I'll keep it there just in case. The "station" for Minmus is now 6/10 complete:

I would offer the alternate opinion that as a "minimal" relay constellation network, the best inclination would be equatorial. The reason being, that most of your "work" is probably going to be on or around equatorial anyway - shooting for moons, etc. Note, a 3-satellite constellation cannot give 100% coverage (and if its equatorial, the patches of no comms will be near the poles) but it can come pretty close, and if you have the available readout on inclination and take care to set all sats to 0.0deg, then the "dropout" will be at latitudes >89.9deg. The ideal layout is an equilateral triangle around the body: The minimum altitude for each satellite to "see" each other, assuming a perfect equilateral triangle, is 2x radius of the body (but in practice, you'll want a bit more to ensure comms even if imperfect). For Jool, this is 2x 6000km. Laythe's orbit is 27000km and its SOI is 3700km so choose the altitude of the satellites between 12,000km - 23,300km and they won't be peturbed by Laythe. Jool's Ap is 72Gm and Kerbin's is 14Gm so the worst case distance could be (I've not worried about if they're in orbital resonance which might make it never occur...) 86Gm. Thus, RA100 is required. 1 of the relays could be a small one. You couldn't rely on only 1x RA100 because it will be occluded by Jool; but at any point, only one/none of the sats will be occluded. Don't forget that at certain times Jool->Kerbin direct path will be blocked by the sun; so for 100% comms you'd need something else, somewhere else. Eg a relay network around another planet or on its own solar orbit. In my first career when I did the sentinel contracts I always stuck a relay on it too, as a "nice to have".

This is normal, if 2 vehicles are in orbit and at 0m/s relative to one another. I'm going to hazard a guess that they're not PERFECTLY in the same orbital plane with exactly the same LAN/ArgPe/Ap/Pe etc, so the orbits will be slightly different, so they will "librate" if one is viewed from the other. Look at map view and set the map so you only see the 2 craft, and compare their orbits traced around the Mun. Might I ask, what altitude is the space station? I've found that these effects occur in lower/faster orbits, and if you set a higher orbit, it still occurs but over a much longer time, so you have a much easier time adjusting for it and successfully docking etc. As for the exploding parts.....

Asparagus staging is interesting and can be made to be efficient but for now, keep it simple: 3 Stages 1st stage using SRBs and does 1000m/s For SRBs there are 2 parameters you can change - the amount of fuel; and thrust. These change the deltaV and TWR respectively. You can literally (in the VAB) "tune" the SRB performance to exactly what you want it to be.

I can't really take the credit for it. Its based on a very similar idea/design by Blaarkies, he added multiple science jrs to a craft in orbit then sent it to Minmus too. Its not really a "space station" either because it doesn't have any crew accommodation. Its just a modular thing with a bunch of docking to be done. It feels like space station construction though. The reason I figured is, on Minmus the orbital speed is "only" about 160 m/s (and much reduced gravity losses on descent/ascent too) so its feasible to land-take off multiple times there, where it isn't so much on Mun with its ~550m/s orbital speed. Its also a "concept tryout" for interplanetary travel, which I don't need in "Diamond" but would be needed for NCD. Not saying I'm going to try that after......but......