Fendleton

I tend to drop my final orbital-insertion stage while it still has fuel in it. It allows me to recover from a problem with spare fuel if I need to, and it means I can easily de-orbit the stage when it's ejected, rather than have it clog up LKO. Alternatively, I use a single-stage+SRB-to-orbit design to lift lighter vehicles into circular orbits, which I then de-orbit in one piece and parachute back down to the KSC. Either way, I usually have fuel left in the tanks. Of course, for some vehicles where I don't care about debris, I'll use all the fuel I can get so I can reach a destination. They're the oddity rather than the rule however.

Usually I fit seperatrons to my upper stages......I only manually delete debris if it stops me from targeting something I need to dock with.

Looks like I made it. Had some issues with password not working (and the password reset function not working) but it seems to be working now...

I've been struggling with lag, bugs, explosions and other things stopping me from doing much. But in the last day or so, my NM4-D rocket has managed something...odd. [spoiler=] That's the main ascent engine. It's not the ONLY ascent engine, but I wasn't expecting to get to Duna (albiet in an out-of-control collision course) before lighting up the nuclear engine. That stage even had full fuel when I reached solar orbit..... Once KSP gets patched to a less crashy-explodey-use-all-the-RAM-in-the-southern-hemisphere version, I definitely know how I'm going to be building future rockets. Maybe get that return trip the Duna I've been trying to do since the update came out only to have everything fall victim to the RAM bug.

This is the infinite-glide glitch in action. I've previously tested it and sent a canard nearly 400 kilometers up (this took quite a bit of work, mind). I suspect it has something to do with the way they seem to 'twitch' after they've detached from a crashed aircraft. The canard starts off slow, then accelerates quickly up to about 2km/second (sometimes higher), then stays at that speed until it doesn't have any air for the glitch to push against.

It won't fit in the floppy drive!

Hmm. Given how Elite II for the C64 managed to have quite a lot of things that KSP has (fairly realistic Newtonian physics, landing, curved polygons [which was a big deal back in 1993], large universe that uses procedural generation to keep the fielsize down...)...and had docking (of sorts)...it's not too far fetched that a game like KSP, but more basic, would have been possible in some form. The construction/modular destruction would probably have been the hardest bit, and if anything would be the bit that made such a game impossible on the platform.

The NERVA program was initially cancelled because the president at the time (Nixon?) didn't want to fund a mars mission. NERVA existed to facilitate the mission, so it was cancelled once it became clear the program wouldn't fail. The main problem is crash damage. If an NTR crashes, it's not a pretty sight. Because they're quite heavy (and shielded), they're more likely to last all the way through a re-entry....but that shielding will be damaged, and will fail on impact if it hasn't failed earlier. This leads the the fuel elements being scattered around the crash area (note to people not familiar with contamination science: radioisotopes are classed as their own group of contaminants, but they're basically heavy metals. This means you can't easily remove them from soil: you have to scrap up the soil (ALL of it), encase it in concrete or glass, and bury it in a vault for a few thousand years) causing issues from radiation (type and level depends on how concentrated the contaminants are, and what elements are used in the reactor) AND the innate toxicity of the heavy metals themselves. if the engine loses containment and disintegrates in the atmosphere, you get lighter contamination over a larger area. In which case you have radioactive cows for a few months, and toxic mushrooms for several years....and you really can't do much to clean things up. With modern "let's de-orbit things sensibly" practice combined with designing the reactor to not disintegrate before impact, this can be avoided by sending debris into the ocean (who likes whales anyway?), but there's always the potential for a failure to result in a decaying orbit that turns into a bad accident. Australia was peeved enough by being hit with bits of Skylab (and both Spain and Canada have been utterly furious when the US has accidentally dropped unfused nukes onto their land), so just imagine what any country would do if a fully fueled reactor hit their territory, causing contamination which the country might not be in a position to clean up. It would be very similar to a defused nuclear weapon being released...and historical instances have shown this to be VERY expensive and politically damaging to fix up. Of course, NTRs are not filled with explosives when they hit, but they're travelling fast enough that probably doesn't matter. NERVA was designed as (I think) a third or 4th stage engine, and would have worked just fine as such. You don't really want to have lots and lots of reactors on a spaceship.....using LFEs or SRBs to get up to a height where you can run your NTR all the way into orbit (and beyond) is far more efficient for the cost (and not having to have lots of expensive recovery systems to retrieve the engines)...since I would imagine that these engines become expensive quickly, especially as you add in safeguards to bring them up to modern safety standards. Plus the controls on nuclear material and public opinion would make dropping stages with reactors in them.....slightly risky, politically. And environmentally. You have to minimise impacts. The main issue to PREVENT an NTR flying is probably the "nuclear is bad" PR thing. While I'm personally against nuclear power stations (On some fairly strong reasons, but not as a uniform "No nuclear power stations should ever be built anywhere" thing), nuclear rockets don't have all of the same issues, due to their design and the fact they aren't bolted down in a big building that can be damaged or destroyed (except during engine/vehicle assembly, where they really shouldn't be running)....if the launch platform is reliable enough, and the engine is designed sensibly with modern technology....it's likely they could be made to work within acceptable safety standards. Of course, public opinion differs on such things. Most people 1: Don't understand how nuclear engines (or reactors. Or bombs) work. 2: Don't understand how induced radioactivity works and 3: Think all things nuclear can turn into atom bombs in an accident and are designed in exactly the same way regardless of purpose.... But I'd venture that rocketry is probably one of the better things to use nuclear power for. It probably isn't going to happen, but a well designed one fired from somewhere safe, with adequate fuel element design, protection from an explosive failure of the rocket, and safe disposal or recovery system? It'd probably be fine. Until one went wrong, in which case there would be nasty political and environmental impacts.

I go for reliability, then performance. Aesthetics are important, but not as important as getting it into the air past the RAM bug in 0.17, and then getting the payload into orbit. I've got some rather nice designs in the pipeline for an interplanetary craft right now that have gone from 175 to 140 parts...and I'm fairly sure I can get them to 130 or so and still be both fun, non-explosive, and able to perform as required. I don't like the uber-efficient minimalism designs, but optimising larger craft seems to have solved a lot of glitch issues.

That said, parachutes still seem to be made out of woven nitrocellulose.

Replace the lower fins with controllable winglets/canards. Your SAS/ASAS units are OK for in-orbit work (albiet, slow) where there's no aerodynamics at work..but for ascent, they really need something to move air around. Not sure if SAS controls winglets like ASAS does, but it should be worth a shot.

There's also the option of having side-mounted landing engines/fuel pods using the smallest available LFE. Having those hang down past the NERVA lets you mount the legs on those, use them as a descent/first part of ascent stage without smashing the NERVA into the ground, then eject them on the way up again, thus not having to drag the extra mass back home. it also allows for fuel-crossfeed to the main NERVA engine/s for the flight to your destination. Also, I'm no nuclear engineer (I'm an ecology student! *crazed look*), but wouldn't radioactive exhaust indicate either a really MASSIVE amount of stray neutrons flying around the reactor......or that parts of the fuel rods are being dissolved into the fuel as it travels through the reactor? Both seem likely to me, but the latter sounds far more Kerbal (and more consistent with the fact that the engines aren't actually *that* prone to exploding). It would be just like them to pump some hideously nasty solvent through a nuclear reactor to see if it worked better than just burning it.

Personally I just go by the rule that if it can take off and land on Kerbin, it's really really overpowered on the Mun and should therefore be just fine. If you look at the various efforts to make landers right now (Like Morpheus, before it exploded), the easiest way to test is just to see how it performs here, then just do the Delta-V calculations (or in my case, just guess) how the change in thrust required will translate to what it can do in microgravity.

Well, the game IS pretty dang laggy right now. A guy I know on IRC (who got me into the game) has basically given up even trying to go interplanetary because of the extra lag in 0.17, and I've been having trouble myself. That said....condemning an ALPHA version for having issues is kinda silly. I like the game as is.....even though it'd be a lot nicer with the ability to send up full-sized rockets without random lag, glitches and explosions.

Also make sure that center of thrust is directly below the center of gravity. Anything else is a recipe for an uncontrolled spin and a breakup. Fuel tank balance is one solution, but you can also vector the engines themselves. Or just have boosters on the upper AND lower wing surfaces, if your craft is already symmetrical. It's not as pretty or as elegant as a perfectly-balanced shuttle-style spaceplane....but it's a lot easier to get working.

While it's hard to comment without seeing an example of the rocket you're using... The general trick is to optimise the hell out of your launch system: Efficient fuel crossfeed, using a pair of X2 symmetry droptanks/boosters rather than a single X4 set so you can drop one of them earlier...use as few struts as possible and have them in critical areas to reduce the risk of failure...and then try to get a lot of fuel up, along with as little propulsion as you can get away with. Unless you want a return mission, which needs both more fuel AND more thrust than a one-way mission. Basically, the problem with the insane lag KSP has on launch is down to two things: Rendering the land and the wierd ocean underneath it (which is annoying, but apart from turning everything down/custom configs, not much can be done), and physics simulation. Physics is the really big one with large rockets...and to cut back on physics lag/explosions, you want as few parts as is physically possible, while still having the required strength to get off the pad. So cut back on winglets, struts that haven't joined properly, struts that aren't attached to things that were previously breaking off, struts that aren't along the direction of stressing forces. Connector pieces as well (most of them are dead weight anyway). Same goes for the ship you're carrying up: The lighter it is, the less the rest of your rocket needs to do to get it up, and the fewer parts it needs to have. Pausing the game a few times while physics is turning itself on sometimes also helps for me. I've had very similar issues with larger rockets falling apart/exploding because the physics is glitching...ultimately it took me about an hour to work out how to get a rocket fixed to the point where it could lift off (I cut a LOT of struts,put new ones in the places they were 100% needed and redesigned the rocket to not need the others, and I paused the game while it was rendering the launch area, then again when physics had just been enabled.), and it worked just fine (apart from me missing my destination from a mistimed burn). Edit: Summary= Optimise the hell out of things, and see how it goes. And try your first return mission as a flyby/orbit mission, see what fuel you've got, then try a return. THEN worry about a return landing.

Well, I made it to Duna. My intention was to test my NM-1 craft on a return voyage...but it turns out that parachutes + heavy craft is WORSE than just having the heavy craft. So I'm trying again with a more optimised launcher and seeing what I can land....with even larger parachutes. If those don't work, I'm just ditching them and doing full powered landings without a drogue. Still. For a first attempt at getting to Duna, it wasn't too bad. [spoiler=]

That new radar altimeter is indeed VERY nice. My own landing on Eve, somewhat late to the party: Landing burn (I still had an entire stage left. Next planned mission is to get to Duna and then attempt a return to kerbin. may not land for that mission though.): Landed. As you can tell from my MET, I messed up my insertion and had to improvise a bit. It doesn't actually seem to be that hard to get to new planets. Getting back is going to be interesting though.

That, sir...is one of the funniest screenshots I have seen in a long time. My own attempts to land on other worlds have had mixed results. My first experimental craft sent Jeb all the way to eve, where he was killed when the chute ripped off the command pod (it fully deployed at 50m/s and with only the Mk.1 pod attached to it. Seems that thick atmosphere is a tricky one to deal with). All my later attempts have used the heavier 3-man pod and as yet haven't even made it into orbit. Actually getting to other worlds seems pretty easy...it's getting the darned ships into orbit that's causing me headaches. Lagsplosions and more literal explosions everywhere.

Started up the game, built a basic rocket....and almost got a landing on Eve, were it not for the fact that a standard parachute without struts tends to rip away if you use it on minmus even if it's only connected to the command pod. Still. I know I lan-...uh...crashed....into something wet. Had to stop trying to build larger rockets to get there safely after the game started lagging like hell. But I'm enjoying it. The new NERVA-style engines really do work brilliantly.

Some centuries later, the Kerbals are finally sending their first interstellar mission.....when the return of the errant space mission goes horrifically to plan. *WHAM*

I've had this problem previously on polar missions (not gonna post my stuff here, yet, because I have coursework to do instead of flying there again). One solution is to forget about a proper landing and just add some extra parachutes. Or if you have them anyway, activate them when you lose control. Worst comes to worst, you'll end up with the cockpit breaking off on impact.

In real life: NERVA was an experimental set of engines designed by NASA to update the Saturn 5 into a vehicle that could life much heavier loads, and send a crew to mars. BECAUSE of this, the program was cancelled as soon as it became clear they'd made an engine that could be used for such a job (going to mars was deemed too expensive, so they cancelled everything that would let them get there). Basically, instead of using a chemical reaction, you heat up your fuel (NERVA used liquid H2) using a nuclear fission reaction. This has unfortunate results if your rocket crashes and you're not using modern fuel rod designs (they actually tested this: they put an early prototype in a train car after modifying it to go critical so they could see what would happen. Environmental laws really weren't so strong back then.), and still isn't so nice even WITH modern rods... but it's a wonderfully efficient system. Far better than using an Ion engine in KSP, since we have to do things by hand, and ion engines are REALLY slow.

I'm planning a probe to attempt an aerocapture maneuver on one or more of the planets...I'll then use the knowledge gained from it to plan "proper" missions. It'll probably go wrong and end up as either an aerobrake or an aerocrashintotheplanetanddie. I have done simulations on Kerbin using ultra-fast approaches with an apoapsis as low as 17km to get into an 85km orbit. I'm also planning my manned missions as 2-parters. One ship to go there, take off, get into orbit...a rendezvous...and then EVA transfer to a second craft in orbit. Maybe even try rigging the ascent stage to self-destruct.

For your first go I'd suggest first doing a mission to orbit the Mun, then deciding whether to land or not later. It's what I usually do, because direct landings are a bit hit and miss. Get them wrong and you'll "land" at 500m/s. You also get to check your fuel later to see if you can make it. First off: Your altitude is a little high for an efficient mission. Generally I try to circularise at 125km or under to save fuel. No big deal though, as long as you've still got enough fuel. What you need to do now: 1. Wait until the mun rises over sets under the horizon of kerbin. (Thank you Pyre) 2. Point the craft prograde, switch to map view, Immediately burn until your apoapsis is at about the right height. Some time before this, the patched conics SHOULD show you entering the Mun's SOI. If it doesn't, just shut off the engine and timewarp until the mun comes into the right position a billion orbits later. 4. Warp until you get captured by the Mun. 5. Finetune your path according to the orbit you want. A 50km holding orbit is an OK place to start, and requires a 50km (or so) periapsis. A 10km orbit makes landing extremely easy, but you don't get to use timewarp past about X10. My standard holding altitude is between 10 and 12 kilometres for an equatorial orbit. 6. When you get to your desired altitude at periapsis, circularise. You should still be using your main rocket for this, rather than your lander, although that depends on the spacecraft design. 7. Congratulations. You're now in orbit around the Mun. If you have a lander with enough fuel, you'll want to attempt a descent. On the light side, so you can see the shadow of the lander at low altitude and know when you're about to touchdown. Otherwise, you can return to Kerbin by orbiting until the planet rises above the horizon, then burning while pointing to prograde. That will eventually put you on either an elliptical orbit or a direct return trajectory. 8. Landing is fairly simple. Use ASAS to keep steady (or a lot of button mashing) on retrograde the whole way down, and make sure you end up going straight down. Don't let your speed get too low before you're at low altitude: 30-50m/s is my general approach speed between 1 and 2 KM up, higher than that you just want to be going slow enough you can quickly get to a safe speed when you need to (so, 80-100m/s). About 500-1000m above the surface (NOT 500-1000 on the altimeter) reduce speed down to 30m/s or so, check you're going straight down....and aim to slow your speed down in the last 50-100m, slow to under 10m/s, with no horizontal component. Try not to land on steep slopes. 9. To get back, take off, head east into a low altitude orbit as soon as you can. Use the same "burn prograde when the planet rises" trick to get back on a return path, or into an orbit where it's easy to return from. If the planet rises while you're getting INTO orbit, just keep burning and you should get there in one burn. Keep in mind that flying below 10km over the Mun at orbital speeds makes for some nice landings (and lets you see the surface details that higher orbits do not), but is risky due to terrain clearance (especially since you will not have a perfectly equatorial orbit without extra correction burns).