Millitron

I've toyed around with mods, like Damned Robotics and Gaby's submarine parts, but I haven't done much with them. The trusses in DR are great for making lander legs though, when the stock ones aren't long enough. Also, crew-tanks As for mechjeb, I mostly use it for Smart A.S.S, and the orbital and surface info. The only other times I use it are when I've already done the maneuver in question manually plenty of times. For instance, I can't be bothered to manually launch every crew delivery for my 15 man space station.

Well, they're both important. I'm not sure which has more tolerance for error, but being dead-on for one will not correct for being way off on the other. If your phase angle is off by 180 degrees, it doesn't matter how precise you were with your ejection angle, you've missed.

You could've done the launch a little more efficiently. Since we're transferring to a planet in a lower orbit, your Kerbin parking orbit should have a heading of 270 for best efficiency. Your launch will lose about 170m/s deltaV, but your transfer will be significantly cheaper.

Well, the Oberth effect actually is more effective when you have higher kinetic energy, which is not necessarily the same as higher orbital energy. In any case, it is easier to change inclination at low kinetic energy, because of the way vectors work. When you make a burn, you're essentially adding another vector into the sum that normally makes up your velocity vector. When you're moving slower, i.e. your velocity vector is shorter, your burn doesn't need as much energy to turn your velocity vector. Think of it with triangles. In the picture I attached, the Red line is your original velocity vector, the blue and green lines are your burn vectors, and the purple line is your new velocity vector. In each triangle, the burn vector is the same length, i.e. same delta V. Notice that when your original velocity vector is shorter (lower speed), the same length of burn will provide a wider angle between your original vector and your new vector. As for your other question, as long as we are talking about space-flight, i.e. no atmosphere, thrust doesn't matter when it comes to delta V. The extra engines do nothing but add weight, decreasing the delta V a given amount of fuel will provide.

I'd actually try to build smaller if I were you nhnifong. For instance, you don't need more than one nuclear engine for each transfer. You need one on your Jool transfer stage, and then one on your return transfer stage, but that's it. Carrying all those nukes is just extra weight making everything unnecessarily large. Likewise, you should stick SRB's on the lander. Their quick, high thrust is great for making that final burn, because like you said, its most efficient to loiter as little as possible.

Press M to bring up the map. Do your burn there. When you see your orbit freak out and not be an ellipse anymore, you're on a Kerbin escape trajectory.

You and I are in a similar situation. I have a slightly better CPU and a little more RAM, but not much, and I lag pretty badly around 100 parts. I've found that pausing frequently gives the game time to catch up, giving you 15-20 seconds of lag-free play. I've also found that exiting all other programs helps as well. Also, go back to the space center whenever you change SoI. Something about SoI changes has a nasty effect on framerate, I'm guessing its a memory leak. You could get Cheat Engine and use it to slow down KSP. It will play slower, but it will be a stable speed, so you'll get much better framerate. I haven't done that yet, as I'm working on upgrading my PC

My escape pods already kinda achieve this. I haven't ever put them on a balloon, but if they work from orbit there's no reason they wouldn't work from the upper atmosphere. http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/forum/showthread.php/23663-Lifeboat-Class-Escape-Pods

I actually thought about this, but the range is actually pretty good. I only tested up to 175km, because the drops take quite awhile without time-warp, around 12 minutes. Higher drops would take even longer. I had plenty of fuel though after the deorbit burn for both models though. In its current incarnation, the 1-man version actually is just an RCS tank. I'm not ready to release it to the public yet, but I believe it will weigh less than 1 ton.

Its all really good except for one minor thing. You absolutely don't need more than 1 tank for your nuclear engine if you're only going to the moon, especially considering 1 tank can get you out past Duna if you do it right. In fact, you can almost certainly get away with using the half-sized tank for a Mun mission.

Inspired by the insane-but-real MOOSE (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE), I've begun working on a series of emergency re-entry vehicles. They are designed to minimize weight, while simultaneously providing a survivable re-entry. Two models exist currently, with a third in the works. Currently, the Lifeboat series offers 1-man, 2-man and 3-man pods. All versions are much lighter than traditional 3-man command, with the Lifeboat-MK1 weighing in less than 1 ton, Lifeboat-MK2 weighing it at 1.5, tons and the Lifeboat-MK3 weighing in at 1.9 tons. A traditional 3-man pod and RCS tank weighs approximately 5 tons. The only required mod is either mechjeb or any other mod which allows control of unmanned vehicles, since the passengers have no control of the craft. In the files attached, I have used a slightly modified Kerbal X (the one that comes with the game) as a launch vehicle, but anything which allows nose-mounting and can reach orbit will suffice. The Lifeboat is nose-mounted on the vehicle. Simply EVA crew onto the Lifeboat's ladders one at a time, decouple, and use the RCS to de-orbit. It is recommended to turn off Smart A.S.S. or any other autopilot functions, as they will waste RCS fuel. It is also recommended to use RCS to slow the pods as much as possible a few moments before each phase of chute deployment, to alleviate dangerous G-loads. Last, do not try to fight any rotations with RCS, as it is extremely ineffective and just wastes fuel. When flown correctly, the pod touches down at a gentle 4.1-5m/s. The following album is the maiden voyage of the Lifeboat-MK2, which is the 2-man version. http://imgur.com/a/vvzPh All versions have been tested and proven to be able to de-orbit from 175km, circular orbits. Higher orbits should be possible, but users should be aware that the pods must have a shallow re-entry from high orbits, as the G-load on chute deployment can cause loss of parachute at high speeds. Note, at least one crewman must be in the main vehicle to decouple the Lifeboat. In the event that the entire crew is to board the Lifeboat, the final crewman must decouple the Lifeboat before he boards it. Also note, Lifeboat-MK2 is only rated for exactly two passengers, no more, no less. Likewise, Lifeboat-MK3 is only rated for exactly three passengers. The designer takes no responsibility for loss of life or property in the event that these guidelines are not adhered to.

Inspired by a real-life escape/suicide pod (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE), I decided to try my hand at making one. After many failed versions and deaths, I finally arrived at the Lifeboat-MK2. This photo album is its maiden flight. http://imgur.com/a/vvzPh

Inspired by a real-life experimental, 1-man emergency re-entry capsule (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE), I decided to work on safe re-entry without a command pod. After a few major versions, and dozens of minor fixes between major reworks, I came up with this. I call it the Lifeboat-MK2. http://imgur.com/a/vvzPh Anyways, this version is a resounding success, which is a huge relief after 12 deaths and who knows how many aborts even beginning the test. A fully fueled Lifeboat weighs 1.5 tons, empty its about 1.3. This is much lighter than a conventional 3-man pod and de-orbit RCS module, which weighs in around 5 tons. Too bad this pod only holds two people. Plus, the ride is an absolutely terrifying, white-knuckled one-way trip. The pod has so little fuel, once you board it, you're committed. No going back. My next version will hold 3, so I can "save" a whole crew in one go.

lol, 2^16 sales by 0.16.

I agree that the distant stars could be better, but all this talk of nebulas and such is misinformed. Even in space, everything outside our solar system just looks like specks of light; you can\'t make out any detail with the naked eye.

Well, the issue isn\'t with time-warping with a single ship, its with time-warping with 100 'vessels'. Since the physics have to be calculated from the scene origin, and distant vessels are very far from the scene origin, you hit huge inaccuracies due to poor floating-point math. This would be a problem even without timewarp if we\'re talking an N-body solution, because the patched conics approximation skirts physics completely. If you include timewarping though, the inaccuracies become absolutely ridiculous, leaving vessels (or worse yet, parts of vessels) dozens of kilometers away from where they should be. Even if a way around the Must-Be-Near-Scene-Origin problem can be found, it will be extremely computationally complex for any world with more than a few vessels. We aren\'t talking about a solution, we\'re talking about an approximation, which isn\'t all that hard. If Harv can actually solve it though, he totally should. 8)

You can overshoot the moon and not get stuck in a solar orbit right now. The only times you get stuck, are when you accidentally get a gravity-assist from the moon as you fly by, and end up over kerbin\'s escape velocity, which is realistic. This is so common because a typical TMI burn gets you pretty close to Kerbin-Escape Velocity, and not much more is needed from the moon to tip you over the edge. Accounting for drift and plotting trajectories involving multiple bodies is planned, thats actually the 'patched' part of patched conics. It\'s patching the individual conics together. It just hasn\'t been implemented yet because it\'s a little complicated, and there\'s bigger fish to fry right now, i.e. docking. Since you can do it by eye well enough right now, it isn\'t too high on the list of things to do, but it hasn\'t been forgotten. Plus, how do you handle the physics calculations for dozens of vessels at 10,000x timewarp? That seems extremely computationally expensive. As for orbital perturbations by the moon, I would suspect that if it was really desired by players, the devs could fake it somehow.

This has been discussed dozens of times, and I feel I should warn you that quite a lot of people are tired of repeating this discussion over and over again, and will probably have snarkier responses than mine. At any rate, what you\'re basically asking for is a solution to the N-body problem, which is unfeasible if you also want to have the orbital map and time compression. It isn\'t that it can\'t be done, just that it would require reworking the vast majority of the game, and the only things it would change would be allowing Lagrange points. The current system, called the patched conics approximation, is more than adequate for our needs. It\'s so accurate, that\'s what NASA used to get to the Moon in real life. So, basically its a ton of work for very little reward, along with opening up the possibilities for tons of new bugs.

This is true if you aren\'t planning any additional burns, but we\'re discussing moon missions, so we are planning additional burns. Due to the Oberth Effect, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberth_effect) making your burn at periapsis is more efficient, since burns at high speeds are more effective than a similar burn at low speeds. Because of this, lining up your TMI with your periapsis is beneficial. Admittedly, we\'re dealing with relatively low speeds and low masses, so the effect isn\'t as powerful as it is IRL, but its still there.

In case you haven\'t heard of it, Aurora 4x is an indie game which is basically Europa Universalis meets Master of Orion, or what Spore\'s space stage should\'ve been. You start with a single planet and work your way up to having a galactic empire (or until hostile aliens blow you up). It has amazingly in-depth ship construction, with the player manually specifying designs for the different classes of ships, with incredibly flexible and complex possibilities. You build your space fleets, and work on interstellar colonization, managing everything from galactic politics to terra-forming. I\'m no good at the game, as it\'s wicked hard, but I definitely see good things in its future. Here\'s the wiki if you want to read more about it: http://aurorawiki.pentarch.org/index.php?title=Main_Page What do you guys think? Would this be a good way to go? Maybe we could even get a converter like for going between Europa Universalis saves to Victoria scenarios, so your final save in KSP could be your starting point in Aurora? Even if it wouldn\'t be good for KSP, what do you guys think of the game?

You could CFG-edit the radial decouplers to be more powerful, so the separated engines get pushed further away.

There\'s been some discussion about it, and what we think is happening, is that whatever causes the Kraken acts on individual parts. Large ships invariably have more parts, and so the Kraken has more parts it can act on. So a ship with just a CM is effected by an imperceptible amount, but as more parts are added, it starts feeling more effects. We don\'t know exactly how it grows, but it seems to not be a linear growth. That is, adding single parts to small ships has little effect, but adding single parts to large ships has a much greater effect.

It needs to auto-trigger if a structural failure occurs between any pieces still attached to the main stack. Most accidents kill the crew in within a frame or two of starting, which is way too fast to reasonably trigger the escape manually. Also, does it also trigger via the space bar? So if we get to that stage successfully, we can decouple as usual?

Is there a way to make a single burn for TLI, and be captured by the moon into a stable orbit? Usually when I do the Horizon method, I end up either in a hyperbolic lunar orbit, or on a collision course. Is there a way to aim it perfectly so I am captured without any extra burns? Do I just need to have exceptional aim and luck, or is there some trick to it?

With persistence, you would only need to get it to lunar orbit once, then you can save, and try the landing as many times as you want.